


As The Soft Walls Eat Us Alive

by PaksenarrionReader



Series: Reader does Overtrash [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (the fallout of) Widowtracer, Cat Dad McCree, F/F, Jewish Mercy, Lemon Tea, Overwatch!Symmetra, Pharmercy (in the background), Talon!Hanzo, Talon!McCree, mental illness galore, slow updates because irl is being its usual self but an effort to keep them consistent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-02-11 18:23:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12941076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaksenarrionReader/pseuds/PaksenarrionReader
Summary: Angst. Hopelessness and mistakes and bad choices. A step back for every two steps forward. Painfully single-minded focus on my main girls, with everyone else on the sidelines. Ideally, also something to make everything worth it, in the grand scheme of things. Takes place immediately after Being Only Human, so I would recommend checking that out first.





	1. Chapter 1

_**Day 1, Week 1, Month 1** _

 

Emily curled up a little, down on her stomach in the cot Winston had been generous enough to offer her, Lena’s favourite plush sloth firmly cradled to her chest.

If she held onto the plushie hard enough, like Lena would burrow into her arms on a bad night, it would almost be like a good luck charm to tide her over until sunrise. Almost like things were going to be okay. Almost like her girl hadn’t been dying in her arms a few scant hours ago.

She was pretty certain she was going to have nightmares of tonight for the rest of her life. Of the way Lena was trembling from the pain and the cold. Of the way rivulets of her blood had poured down her face, seeped through the sleeve of her jacket torn into shreds over the wound that had shattered her shoulder, ran between cobblestones paving the street. Of the way she was limp and so terrifyingly still, first in Emily’s arms, then in Fareeha’s. Of the way her entire body had been overtaken with bright blue for a second when Winston and Angela were replacing her cracked accelerator—blue that Emily had, so far, only seen harnessed and at Lena’s command.

Of how Lena had begged her to run.

And of how Widowmaker had been looking at her.

She’d known she wouldn’t be able to defend Lena. Not against someone armed to the teeth and moving with all the arrogant, prowling grace of a hungry cobra, not a single movement wasted and each of them carrying the possibility of ending Emily’s life. But she couldn’t bloody well stand aside and watch Lena be murdered, now could she?

It had taken her a long while to tear her eyes from the barrel of a rifle pointed at her. Then she had looked into Widowmaker’s eyes, and the realization that she was going to die slammed into her like a bucketful of icy water flung in her face.

So she did the only thing she could think of.

She stalled.

And somehow, something she had said broke Widowmaker’s impersonal, matter-of-fact cruelty, replaced it with shock, recognition, anguish, and what under any other circumstances could have been tenderness. The same hand that had, moments before, broken the back of Lena’s legs and wrenched a scream after heart-stopping scream from her mouth—that same hand had come against the top of Emily’s head almost delicately, fingers meant for wrapping around the rifle’s stock gently carding through her hair.

And somehow, whatever she had said to cause that, it made Widowmaker disappear into the night.

And Emily hadn’t been made a widow before she even had the chance to ask for her girlfriend’s hand.

All she had suffered for her trouble was a bruise on one shoulder, where the assassin had struck to knock her down. Comparatively, it seemed almost too little.

Emily pressed her face into the plush sloth. She could almost, almost, still smell Lena on it.

~*~

Widowmaker laid in her bunk, hands under her head, wide awake.

There was a tightness in her chest, an animal urge to pull herself into a ball as tight as she could manage and back away into the farthest corner of her confines, a mindless compulsion to run and hide.

So she laid on her back, mindful of the surveillance cameras that her quarters were ripe with, and she stared at the ceiling, and breathed through that chaos to keep it under wraps, waiting it out, waiting for it to go away.

Except it was not going away.

From the moment she had confronted the girl who had thrown herself between Tracer and certain death, she had been like this. From the moment she ran—for there could be no denying the fact that she ran, that she had to lean against a wall and clutch her rifle to her chest as if it were a shield, that she had to force herself to even out her breathing and still her trembling hands—from the moment she ran from an illusion, she had been like this. And the further she tried to run, the more relentless the illusion grew, bound to her feet like her own shadow.

She swallowed, trying to force away the tightness to her throat, and took another measured breath. Her heart was beating its usual rhythm, slow and steady, and yet it was not like usual at all—she was acutely aware of each beat, now, as if it was hammering harder, the sound and the strength of it deafening, maddening, loud, loud, loud.

Still not loud enough to drown out the urge to scream that was pounding just as regularly against the walls of her skull.

She should be sleeping. The assignment had been an exhausting and lengthy one, the skirmish that crowned it harrowing, and the hours of rest granted to her very few. Distraught as she was for the last portion of the battle, after she had collected herself barely enough to be able to lay down cover fire again, she had gotten careless, and she had gotten injured—several bullets had torn new lines into her forearm, in what was by no means a debilitating wound, but a wound nonetheless. And Widowmaker did not heal as quickly as her colleagues. Not nearly as quickly indeed. The only factor that seemed to aid the process was getting copious amounts of rest.

Rest that, right now, seemed firmly denied to her.

Another deep, controlled breath, and Widowmaker was forced to accept that whatever this was, it was not going away. If she could not beat it back, then the only thing left to do was to let it run its course—as quickly as it would move, preferably.

So she pulled her hands from under her head, lifted them up above her face, and deliberately, with intent, closed her eyes.

Immediately, her hands were no longer the corpse-livid shade of purple, but warmer and shaking, the skin coarse and scarred up with years of handling a rifle soft again—and soaked in sticky bright red staining her palms, droplets of it trailing down onto her wrists.

Widowmaker opened her eyes to find her hands cold and hardened again, no blood, no indent of her wedding ring remaining. She let her arms drop, slowly drew a breath, held until her lungs ached, released just as slowly. Then she sat up, tossing the blanket away, and reached for her workout clothes.

Fine. If tonight was going to be like this, if she would not get the rest she needed, she could just as well tire herself out until she couldn’t even remember her name.

~*~

Angela wrapped her arms a little more tightly around her wife’s neck, even as she was carefully laid down into their bed, to keep Fareeha from pulling away. That Fareeha’s plans could not be further from trying to pull away was as obvious as it was comforting when those arms—one flesh and bone, one steel and carbon fibre, both caring, loving, strong—shifted around her, a hand threading through her hair to press her cheek to Fareeha’s chest, a kiss laid gently over the crown of her head.

“I don’t understand,” Angela found herself saying in a small voice, the first time she had spoken since Fareeha had carried her away from their friends gathered under the door of the operating theatre.

“What do you mean?” Fareeha’s voice was gentle, gentler than anything those who had only seen her as Captain Amari could imagine, as she prompted for an explanation.

It was far too simple, Angela had explained once, to stay in the surgeon mode even after the surgery was over, to convince herself there was more work to be done, to deny herself the time she needed and the tears she could not allow to fall.

And it was far too easy, she had admitted with her eyes downcast and her voice tinged with shame, to stop speaking. Either unless spoken to, or altogether. There was a time in her life, she had explained weakly, when she had become so accustomed to solitude, she would go for literal weeks without uttering a single word, going even as far as starting to forget the official language of wherever she was currently stationed or studying. She was going to need someone to force her to speak, she had asked of Fareeha, someone she could hold onto while she allowed herself to come apart for a little while, someone who would be there for her while she put herself back together.

And Fareeha, so unaccustomed to displays of emotion other than varying shades of irritation and anger, Fareeha had simply nodded her head and sworn to be that person whenever Angela needed her to be.

There was no one better—and since the Recall, no one else—to perform surgeries than Angela. But to perform them, she had to distance herself from the familial bonds chaining her to the people she was performing these surgeries on. She had to stop caring. She had to blank herself and do her job, and the fallout after that was as messy and horrible as it was inevitable, and the longer she put it off, the more devastating it would grow.

“I mean Lena’s injuries.” Angela closed her eyes for a moment, feeling herself starting to shake. “I had to pluck shards of three of her ribs out of her lung. And Lord, her legs—she won’t be able to walk for months, and with that shoulder wound, she won’t push her wheelchair on her own, either. She’ll be chained to _another_ piece of medical equipment, round the clock, for months on end. Do you realize how much it’s going to twist her up inside?”

She broke off with a sob, tears finally trickling down her face, one hand clamped tightly over her mouth, and bowed her head to press her face into Fareeha’s chest when these arms around her held her more closely.

“I don’t _understand_ ,” Angela choked out after a long while. “Lena received three mortal wounds—and a sizeable number of disabling or simply painful ones—I don’t understand _why_. It’s not like her, not like her _at all_ , she had _never_ gone towards needless cruelty, and certainly not to that extent—it doesn’t _make any sense..._ ”

She felt Fareeha stiffen at the mention of Widowmaker, but the hand in her hair hadn’t pulled away or stopped its rough, firm, grounding caress.

“I don’t understand, either,” Fareeha murmured finally, when it became clear Angela couldn’t keep talking on her own. “Her kills had always been... clean. Efficient. Now this...”

“I used to know her,” Angela whispered through tears.

“I know.”

“She was my friend.”

“I remember.” Fareeha leaned down to place another kiss on the top of her wife’s head.

“She would never have done this. Not _this_. Not the Amélie I know.”

She felt Fareeha’s sigh as much as she heard it, the artificial hand rubbing gently across her shoulders. “I believe you.”

And while yes, Fareeha did believe that, she entertained no illusions about Angela’s best friend having been dead for quite a while now. They hadn’t been dealing with the Amélie they used to know when Ana Amari had been declared killed in action. They hadn’t been dealing with the Amélie they used to know when Lena’s stupid, dangerous, helpless infatuation brought her to odds with the rest of the team. They hadn’t been dealing with the Amélie they used to know when the dexter engine of Fareeha’s Raptora was blasted apart with a sniper round, missing her head only thanks to the irregular weaving up and down, left and right that Fareeha had made a habit ever since the first time she saw the sniper that had bested her mother in action.

And much as Fareeha found it cruel and unnecessary to say while her wife was crying herself to sleep in her arms, they would not be dealing with the Amélie they used to know, not the next time their crosshairs met, and not ever again.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Day 2, Week 1, Month 1** _

 

Emily lifted her head, so far rested on her laced hands, when someone had touched her shoulder. Fareeha was standing beside her, guarded concern on her face, the hand of her artificial left arm resting lightly on Emily’s shoulder in a comforting gesture, and her right extending a cup of coffee to the redhead.

“Thank you.” Emily gratefully took the offered drink.

“Did you get any sleep at all?” Fareeha asked, making an effort to let her voice sound soft.

“A little,” Emily admitted. “I think it was almost morning when I finally drifted off, and what I had managed after that was the shallow kind that doesn’t really let you rest.”

“Nightmares?”

“Not yet, no.”

Fareeha pulled a chair beside her, looking slightly apologetic now. “I know this must be all very difficult for you, and very painful. But I’ll have to ask you some questions about last night—ideally, while you still remember it clearly.”

Emily nodded. “I don’t mind, but please let me see Lena first.”

“It can wait that long,” Fareeha conceded easily.

“How is Angela doing?”

“I’ll wake her up in another hour. She works too hard even under normal circumstances, and with everything that happened yesterday...” Fareeha gave a small shrug, lips pressing into a tight line for a moment.

“This must be very hard on her, too,” Emily offered.

Fareeha lowered her head a little, and took a long moment before speaking again. “Lena is invaluable to all of us here. I may be in command, but I can’t imagine Overwatch without her—nor do I want to. We’re all glad she will be fine, eventually.” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I mean, that she’ll make a full recovery. She had repeatedly pulled herself back after worse. We only need to give her time.”

“Time rather seems to be her lot in life, doesn’t it?” Emily said quietly.

Fareeha winced sharply at that, and Emily looked away.

“I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve that. It’s very sweet of you to try, and I really appreciate it, but, Fareeha... I still have her blood on my clothes.”

~*~

Reaper turned his head, more towards the smell of hot chocolate than the hint of movement, and gave a gruff nod in response to Sombra waving a good morning greeting at him—or as much of one as she could manage while yawning so hard, there were tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Did you sleep at all?” he grumbled.

“Bleh. You know how it is,” the hacker flicked her free hand in a dismissive gesture. “First I wanted to finish something, then I got distracted, then I took a wikiwalk, then I remembered I wanted to finish something else too, and then...” she gave a one-shouldered shrug, drinking her hot chocolate from the mug she was carrying. “Well, then it was morning again.”

Reaper gave a displeased grunt. “Go to bed early tonight and tomorrow. You have a deployment the day after.”

“Got it.” Sombra came a bit closer to the window Reaper was standing beside. “Why are you hanging out here on the gym overlook, anyway?”

Reaper turned to the window again, and the answer became evident as the hacker followed his gaze to where Widowmaker—clad in a tight sleeveless top with the Talon insignia emblazoned on the chest and loose gym pants, the black fabric contrasting sharply with the sickly shade of her skin and the white of a bandage over her tattooed forearm, as well as that of elastic hand- and footwraps—had just whipped around to smash the heel of her foot through a hand-to-hand practice target, shattering the hard-light construct, her face tense in concentration as she barked a kiai; as soon as she landed again, she spun to keep the momentum, deflected another bot’s strike with a soft forearm block, and felled it as well with a single hard blow driven from her hips.

Sombra took a long pull of her hot chocolate. “Yeah. Gotta be a great way of starting the day.”

Reaper said nothing, causing a suspicious frown to form on Sombra’s face.

“...She _is_ just starting the day, right?”

“Log says she clocked in just over four hours ago,” Reaper replied.

“Four hours—” Sombra stared at him, speechless for once in her life. “Gabe, that was at three o’clock in the morning.”

Reaper confirmed with an affirmative grunt. Sombra just gave a defeated sigh, her shoulders slumping a little.

“Dios mio. What a fucking mess of a person, right there.”

Reaper grimaced, taking the opportunity of it always going unnoticed under his mask. “Don’t you have anything else do to?”

The hacker stifled another yawn. “That’s rich coming from you, Mister Reaper Man. How long have you been standing here? At least I did something important overnight.”

“Are you trying to say this isn’t?” There was a note of warning in Reaper’s growl now—a note that was entirely ignored when Sombra raised her eyebrows and gave him a smirk.

“That was important. This is personal. Two very different things, Gabi. I know you’ve covered for her before, and have been for literal years.” She made a small pause for effect, unfazed by the ominous red glow slowly building up behind the eye sockets of the bone-pale mask she was faced with. “Araña’s been even more of a mess than usual ever since the mission last night, you know. I guess she’s trying to work that out right now. So she could probably use you down there with her, instead of up here in the rafters like a barn owl.”

“Why do you care?” Reaper snarled.

“Why do _you_ care?” Sombra shot back, clearly running out of patience. “Jesus, Gabi. I gave her a hand with last night, she screwed up, she’s a mess. Doesn’t matter if I’m talking to you out of the goodness of my heart or because I want her in top shape for when I cash that favour in, the end result is still that I want her to get better. She trusts you. So go fucking help her.”

Below them, Widowmaker finished demolishing the practice targets and let out a long huff, in what would look like slow motion with anyone else, her shoulders heaving a little on the next breath she drew. Then, she lifted her injured arm to flex it experimentally, opened and closed her hand a few times; her lips curved in a small grimace of displeasure, and she powered the console governing the hard-light bots down instead of resetting the targets.

Reaper gave a small growl of frustration, even as he and Sombra watched the assassin walk over to a bar meant for pull-ups and jump to grab onto it, as lightly as if she were unbound by gravity. “This is what she needs right now. Not me. Overexerting herself in training is how she regains what little control over her life she’s allowed here.”

“Cool, but she’s gonna hurt her arm even worse...” Sombra trailed off, then sighed as Widowmaker locked her ankles together, then folded her injured right arm behind her back, and started pulling herself up on her left arm alone. “Forget I said anything. So. You expect her to keep this up for much longer?”

Reaper shook his head. “She’s sweating, which doesn’t normally happen. She’ll move to the shooting range within the hour.”

“Boy, ain’t that great,” Sombra muttered, drinking her hot chocolate again. “I don’t suppose she’s eaten anything since last night?”

“I think dealing with hunger is another part of training to her.”

The hacker laughed at that, slapping one hand over her face. “Jesus _fuck_. Are all specialists trained up from the assault trooper level like this? I mean, other than her I’ve only seen the Myrmidon in action, and they’re kind of a special case anyway.”

Reaper gave her a sidelong glance. “How much of the files concerning her have you stolen already?”

The hacker shrugged. “Most of them. Haven’t tapped the logs from her initial conditioning yet, and I don’t think I’m going to. Not really that much for horror stories.”

Reaper turned to face Sombra fully, crossing his arms over his chest. “You know that if you want your presence to be more than tolerated when we’re off the clock, you’ll have to work for it. Not just poach data from every server in an arm’s reach.”

“A dossier is not the person, a map is not the terrain, yeah, I know.” Sombra hadn’t backed down, not even when Reaper stepped into her personal space, uncrossing his arms.

“Widow won’t allow you close easily, and the only thing harder than getting close to her at all is earning her forgiveness for a misstep.” Reaper’s reverberating voice rang harder than the bark of his shotguns. “And if it turns out you’ve gained any of her trust only to stab her in the back, I will make certain you are unable to even scream from the pain I cause you before I hand you over to her for your death.”

The hacker smiled at that, a challenging glint in her eye. Then she switched her mug of hot chocolate to her left hand, spat onto her right palm, and stuck the hand out for a handshake. “Deal.”

Reaper snatched the offered hand with his own gauntleted right, squeezing hard enough for it to hurt and for the points of the metal claws to dig into Sombra’s hand a little, just to prove his point. He was met with an equally forceful grip, and not a single hint of a wince as they kept trying to crush each other’s hands for a good ten seconds before disengaging.

The hacker wasn’t even trying to shake her hand out, Reaper noticed.

“You must really be bored to do _this_ for fun.”

“Not like you know the meaning of the word, anyway,” Sombra shot back with a shrug. “When it’s just for some fun, I do what I want. And if I want a friend, that’s my business.”

Reaper gave a biting chuckle at that. “I still don’t trust you.”

“Good,” Sombra said calmly. “I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

~*~

“I do apologize for taking so long.” Angela gave her wife a withering stare over Emily’s shoulder. “Someone had made the decision to move my alarm clock two hours forward.”

“It’s okay,” Emily reassured. “You look like you could have used at least two more.”

Angela pursed her lips at that, her pale face and dark-circled eyes speaking for themselves, but ducked her head a little. “I could have, yes, but that doesn’t mean you should be kept waiting.”

“Angie,” Emily said softly, but firmly. “It’s okay.”

“Thank you,” Angela relented with a sigh, before glaring at Fareeha again. “Don’t you dare say ‘I told you so’.”

Fareeha turned to her, surprised. “I wasn’t going to.”

“But you were thinking it.”

Fareeha gave her a look that was just as indulgent as it was exasperated, but said nothing—only partially due to the fact that they’ve come to the hospital room door that Angela had been leading them to.

“Well, then. Are you ready?”

Emily swallowed, but gave a small nod. “Yes, I do believe I’m as prepared as I can be, yes.”

“I could wait outside if it’d make things easier,” Fareeha offered.

“No. Both of you please come in with me.”

“Alright then,” Angela said softly.

Emily drew a deep breath, trying to brace herself. It didn’t exactly work. So she took Fareeha’s hand for good measure; the Egyptian turned to her immediately, but the surprise on her face was quickly replaced with understanding, and steel fingers folded securely around Emily’s more delicate hand.

Angela gave them a smile, as if asking Emily to be brave now, and pushed the door open.

“Oh dear _Lord_ ,” was all Emily found herself capable of choking out upon stepping inside.

The room itself was bright enough, with a little bedside table already holding an array of get-well-soon cards and small wrapped boxes framing a slim vase with pastel pink carnation flowers. An equally impressive array of boxy medical equipment was stacked other side of the bed, blocking the view of the patient from the doorway almost entirely.

Almost.

The chronal accelerator sat against Lena’s chest, loosely belted on over the bandages circling her collarbones and completely covering her left shoulder. Several cables peeked from under the blanket covering her, leading from the electrodes glued to her chest to a cardiograph that displayed her heart rate as steady, if still a little bit laboured after the blood loss she had suffered. An access needle in the back of her right hand, laid atop the covers, led an IV dripping steadily into her veins; the other three of her limbs were each encased in a splint. Several of the cuts on the upper half of Lena’s face, where her goggles had been shattered, were held closed with stitches; the lower half of her face was covered with an oxygen mask, plugged into another machine by her bedside. Save for the steady, sleepy rise and fall of her chest, she was still.

Lena was never still. She bobbed left and right even when she was told to sit down. She murmured and fidgeted even when she slept.

She was never still, except for when she had been dying in Emily’s arms, not even a full day before.

“She’ll be okay,” came a murmur, and Emily found herself gently turned away and pulled into a hug as Angela stepped closer—and realized she was squeezing on Fareeha’s hand so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. Probably a good thing she wasn’t holding the Egyptian’s other hand, then.

“I know she will,” Emily managed after a long while. “She’s in your care, after all.”

Angela smiled sadly. “If I had gotten to her five minutes later than I did, it would not have mattered.”

Emily gave a small shake of her head. “Don’t sell yourself short like this, Angie.”

“I am very good in my profession,” Angela said quietly. “But I am not a miracle worker. If you hadn’t given me the chance to save her life...”

“We would be mourning right now,” Fareeha finished for her.

Emily found there was nothing she could say to that. So she settled for putting an arm around Angela’s shoulders for a moment, and for shifting her fingers over Fareeha’s hand, before pulling away from them both in favour of gesturing weakly to Lena.

“Can... can she hear us?”

“It is a possibility,” Angela admitted gently. “But I have no way of telling for certain.”

Emily looked away for a moment before turning to Lena’s unconscious form again, running a hand through her choppy brown hair, leaning down to press their foreheads together. “It’s me, sweet,” she whispered. “It’s good you’re sleeping through this, or you’d be in more than a tad of pain, and ticked off out of your mind with being cooped up here. But it’s going to get better. We’re going to make it through until it does. I love you, and I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

She straightened her back and cleared her throat, suddenly remembering they weren’t alone in the room, and found that both of their friends had attempted to create at least an illusion of privacy for her—Angela had half-turned away, checking some papers on her clipboard, and Fareeha had busied herself with examining the fingernails of her organic hand, as if they could suddenly become something other than very short and gently rounded along the edges.

Emily sniffed, then exhaled slowly, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes before she looked up at Fareeha. “You said you wanted to ask me some questions.”

Fareeha frowned a little, clearly uncertain. “Now?”

Settling down on the edge of Lena’s bed, Emily took her girlfriend’s limp hand, and turned to face Fareeha again. “I did say I would answer. Go ahead, even if my answers turn out to be useless to you.”

With a conceding nod, Fareeha pulled a small spiral-bound notepad and a pencil from the back pocket of her trousers. “Well, for starters... how were you even there?”

“I got a call from a restricted number in the afternoon,” Emily said quietly. “Frankly, I almost hadn’t picked up. I didn’t recognize whoever was speaking, either, but they just said to come where you had been fighting if I wanted to save Lena’s life. There was no time to try to call any of you, so...” She gave a little shrug. “I just went.”

“You realize that call was bait,” Fareeha said gently.

Emily nodded, eyes downcast. “One I will always take.”

~*~

Widowmaker laced her hands and turned them palms outwards, the joints in her fingers popping, before setting to reassemble her freshly cleaned rifle. She was tired after what had become an exercise and marksmanship session truly worthy of a physical test back in training—she was so tired that her muscles felt like lengths of well-oiled rope, a smooth and very noticeable slither under her skin every time she moved now, her ability to think too stunted with exhaustion to allow her focus on much more than looking forward to a shower, a meal, and some sleep for a change.

Yet still, that irksome tightness in her chest hadn’t really gone away.

It had been subdued by how she had worn herself out, yes. But it was not gone. So she made use of an activity she had completed thousands of times, and could complete while blindfolded, to gain enough peace of mind to lean back and examine what, exactly, was wrong with her, so she could think of a countermeasure.

And then, that tightness within her gave a little twinge, and met her scrutiny in kind.

The firing pin slipped from Widowmaker’s fingers, a metallic clink as it fell against the bolt going unheard.

There was a part of her that flinched back from every blow she received. There was a part of her that howled every time the cold whip of fear cracked to freeze her gut in the blooming patterns of frost. There was a part of her that snarled and hissed in fury every time her hands were shackled. There was a part of her that had never stopped mourning her husband, or yearning for the stage she could never set foot upon again, or crying for those who used to call themselves her friends.

There was a part of her that could _feel_.

“I thought I had lost you,” Widowmaker whispered, her voice barely a breath.

It had been so long, after all.

She let her eyes drift closed and her head bow just slightly, even as she reached for the combat knife with the initials _G.L._ inlaid in gold over the black-oxidized metal, and pressed her lips in a kiss to the crossguard—and watched that little twinge of concentrated feeling within her give a tiny whimper, and fold just a bit closer to her heart.

She had a name for that part of herself. The same name she could no longer lay any claim to, herself.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Day 3, Week 1, Month 1** _

 

If anything could be said in favour of Talon, Widowmaker would say that it was thorough. Targets were doggedly pursued until they were eliminated, agents were trained and retrained until there was no argument they would perform their function, bases were positioned out of the way and given ample legal backing to be protected if someone from the outside stumbled upon them—and from the inside, the surveillance had almost no blind spots.

She was only aware of one, in this base—atop the roof, and with a panoramic view of the shoreline, the beach lined with small stones rather than sand, the bright expanse of the Mediterranean Sea open wide and endlessly before her. The vista, though objectively beautiful, didn’t do much for Widowmaker—what she appreciated the most was the opportunity to find herself out of the security cameras’ range, but under that of the radar; the freedom to soak up the sun and let it thaw a little of the chill that had been painstakingly layered into her bones; and the fact that it was inaccessible to anyone without a ladder. Or a grappling hook.

Or the ability to turn into a plume of smoke.

She looked up at the tiny tell-tale hiss that heralded Reaper in the middle of taking physical form. The late afternoon sun brought sharp focus to the contrast between the matte black of his coat and the bone-white of his mask, and gave just a hint of a face still existing underneath it.

“Hey.”

Widowmaker inclined her head. “Hello.” She unlaced her hands, so far rested against her shins, and patted the roof next to herself in an invitation for him to sit with her.

Reaper turned meaningfully to the numerous marks her grapple had bitten into the concrete before he settled down beside her, their shoulders not quite linked, but closer than would be tolerated of anyone else. “Looks like you really like it up here.”

The assassin shrugged. “It’s a good vantage point.”

They sat in silence for a very long time before Reaper cleared his throat. “So what’s the real reason you haven’t killed Tracer yet?”

Widowmaker gritted her teeth, and stayed silent. Reaper watched her profile for a long moment before realizing that little twist to her lips wasn’t an expression of irritation, but of shame.

“Are you even really trying to kill her?”

“I was, at first, I sincerely was,” Widowmaker admitted in a tight voice. “But after I came to know her, more and more intimately over time, I don’t...”

“Want to,” Reaper finished when she trailed off.

Widowmaker gave a small nod.

Reaper sighed in frustration. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

The assassin finally turned to face him, a cautious look in her eyes. “You are not angry with me?”

“I’m just glad you’re still capable of having a preference at all, in anything.” Reaper’s growl snapped with a little more bite than usual, causing Widowmaker to look away again in chagrin. “Listen, it would’ve made things easier for me in front of Doomfist to know this kind of thing in advance. I’ll still make it work, just tell me right away next time, okay?”

Widowmaker nodded in acknowledgement, her voice quiet when she spoke again. “I might, soon.”

Reaper gave her an encouraging ‘hm?’ at that, and waited patiently for her to gather her thoughts as she lifted her head a little to look out into the trail of glittering reflections left on the sea by the slowly setting sun.

“Do you remember,” the assassin said slowly after a very long moment, her voice still softer than most ever had the privilege of hearing. “How we would promise, when we were younger, to go on a grand journey?”

Reaper chuckled despite himself. Even with all things considered, it was a happy memory—the tourist guides, road maps, printed-out articles from electronic newspapers they had piled up over time had accumulated to the point of filling a cardboard box. That point was when they chose a larger box, and Gabriel had joked that if they filled the new box, too, they would have to drop everything—his duties and her career—and go on that trip, if only to make room for more. Amélie had laughed at that, and demanded a globe so she could stick pins into every spot they would visit, then crown the empty box with it for the duration of gathering new destinations. “Every place we’d ever wanted to see, all rolled up into a single trip.”

“We were lying to ourselves, and each other, as fervently as we dreamed of making time for going someday.”

“Getting nostalgic on me, Widow?”

“I can’t feel anything when I think back to those days,” Widowmaker said quietly. “Nothing. It’s as if these memories aren’t truly mine—I have the knowledge, but I can’t recall any association I may have had with it at some point. It might just as well have been someone else’s life, or that of a hero of a book I had once read.”

Whatever warmth might have risen in Reaper’s gut at the reminiscence crunched into frost with the speed and finality of a lightning strike at her admission, and only melted before the heat of anger—at himself, for having allowed that moment of softness in the first place. Meanwhile, Widowmaker paused for a moment again, lowered her head a little, swallowed.

“While the part of me that is...” she lifted her hands slightly, as if indicating the corpse-livid shade of her skin and the Talon barrack wear and the function she was expected to perform. “ _This_... can lay no claim to that life, there is a part of me that still can. I had thought that part of me to be gone, erased, trampled out... but it remains, if only barely, if reduced to an endless struggle not even to survive, but to keep existing—if that state of barely managing to be an echo and a shade in the chest of something one would regard as a monster is even worthy of being called ‘existence’.”

“A monster isn’t that bad of a thing to be,” Reaper offered, lacing his clawed gauntlets over his armoured kneepad. “At least, I’d much rather be a monster than a victim.”

Widowmaker gave a little hum of affirmation. “I find that I must agree. My only wish, now, is that she’ll find it comforting to have one at her disposal.”

“Are you going to know, one way or the other?”

“Hopefully. She is... not always present... doesn’t have enough strength left to be, I think. That’s why I asked you about the past.”

“Trying to coax her out, huh?”

“Yes. I’ve spent these past two days on attempts much like this. Trying to make myself feel something.” Widowmaker slowly closed her eyes, as if in focus. “Trying to get in touch with her.”

“Can you?” Reaper prompted.

Widowmaker gave a tiny nod. “A little.”

“Well, next time you manage to, you tell her that she’s still got a friend who missed her.”

The set of Widowmaker’s shoulders relaxed ever so slightly when she breathed out. “Thank you.”

Reaper bobbed his head in response, and they sat in companionable silence, looking out over the sea, listening to the seagulls cry and the waves lick the shore, the water gradually reaching further and further as the tide started coming.

“Gabriel?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you stay here with me for a while longer?”

“Yeah.” Reaper put an arm around Widowmaker’s shoulders when she scooted a little bit closer, close enough to lean against him. “Yeah, Widow, I will.”

~*~

If anything could be said in favour of Talon, Fareeha would say that it was disciplined. Uniformed and well-trained assault troopers, each agent performing their function with practiced efficiency, seemed to form the bulk of the terrorist organization’s military division, and were often backed by uniquely equipped agents specializing in purposes as specific as the faceless troops were versatile. Each member seemed to know their role, was provided with the means to perform it, and immediately fell back on their comrades in case one’s equipment and training were less than enough to achieve a mission objective.

Which was more than could be said of this new Overwatch.

She had members of the original strike team. She had members of the old Overwatch in its prime, including non-military personnel. She had an ex-Blackwatch agent. She had new recruits.

Neither generation trusted the other two. The eldest saw the middle as runner-ups who botched just as much as they succeeded at, and the youngest as children who thought war was a fun game. The middle group despised the eldest, their former leaders, for their past failures and their affinity for playing dead to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions, and dismissed what the youngest had already accomplished in favour of treating them like recruits straight out of boot camp. The youngest looked down on the eldest and the middle alike, dismissing both as old timers who didn’t even have enough sense to admit a mistake and step down with any semblance of grace, but chose instead to cling to the memories of long-gone glory days and refused to adapt to new enemies, new challenges.

And it wasn’t as if these groups were unified within themselves, either. The eldest were divided with resentment, the middle with distrust, the youngest with rivalry.

And Fareeha, who had been raised by the eldest, among the middle, and on the same dreams and disappointments as the youngest, was supposed to turn this quarrelling pack of misfits into something resembling a coherent military outfit. One capable of effectively countering threats like the possibility of a second worldwide omnic war, dictatorships, terrorists, natural disasters...

It would be a miracle to make all of them sit at the same table.

What little intel they had been able to gather and confirm about Talon suggested that it was comprised of three divisions—military, scientific, and political—with top officers of each forming a council that decided on the organization’s direction and goals.

Fareeha had twelve people. All ready to squabble on a moment’s notice. One in a coma at the moment, and unfit for duty for what would likely be up to a year.

Having Tracer removed from the battlefield—and very nearly, from existence—was a very severe loss. Having Lena removed from life at the Watchpoint was one even harder to bear. Even within this ragged bunch that had usurped the funeral shroud of Overwatch and attempted to wear it like a cape, she was a shining light and a beacon; she knew and had fought alongside the founders, was a veteran herself, and admired the recruits for what they had become and achieved before joining. Everybody respected Lena. Almost everybody liked Lena. And without her presence, there was very little left to hold the rest of them together. Had they lost her completely, in a very short time they would no longer be anything other than divided, and that much more easier picked off one by one.

By making a point of causing Lena excruciating pain and nearly tearing the fabric of reality under her feet again, Talon had said all too clearly that it knew exactly how fragile the new Overwatch was. And somehow, Fareeha had to find the way and the means of making these fractures knit and lay foundation for strength instead of weakness ready to be exploited again.

A small clink of metal broke her out of her reverie, and she turned to see a woman solid five inches taller than herself, auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail save for two fetlocks framing her face, a metal flask extended towards Fareeha.

“You look like you need this more than Future Me does.”

Fareeha snorted, but took the flask. “Thanks.”

A single swig left her clutching at her diaphragm and coughing as the entirety of her throat was set on fire.

“Are you sure this is meant for consumption, and not for dissolving metal paint?” she choked out, once she remembered how to breathe.

“I’m Reinhardt’s _squire_ ,” Brigitte Lindholm reminded dryly, framing the offending word in air quotes. “If I don’t need this on some nights, then I deserve it on others.”

“Fair enough.” Fareeha wiped a few tears out of the corners of her eyes. “Can I do something for you?”

Brigitte tilted her head to the side sceptically, crossing her sculpted arms over her chest. She had another of her ridiculous muscle shirts on, this time a verdant green one with a black UFO and a caption of 'I BELIEVE' in flowing cursive below it. “I could ask you the same thing. If I still had delusions you’d answer. Is your arm doing okay, at least?”

Fareeha nodded, lifting the prosthesis and curling its fingers in a come-hither motion before closing the hand into a fist and opening it again. “All up to spec. Almost better than the previous one, really.”

The engineer chuckled. “I wouldn’t go that extra mile, Fari. But thanks. Anything on your mind that you’re willing to discuss?”

Fareeha shrugged, returning the flask. “Not exactly. What’s on yours?”

“Oh, you know. Gears and patterns and wrenches and steel.” Brigitte hopped up onto the windowsill Fareeha was standing beside, then drank as well—and showed no signs of being affected by the anise-flavoured akvavit—before indicating Fareeha’s steel arm with the flask. “Just glad I won’t be putting one of those together for Lena anytime soon.”

“She’s going to need a wheelchair.” Fareeha tried not to sound too matter-of-fact, too disconnected from the matter—tried not to make it seem like it didn’t concern her deeply, on both a professional and a personal level. Even in her own ears, she failed.

“Mm.” Brigitte swirled the flask, a thoughtful look in her eyes. “And one of her shoulders is in pieces, too, right? Which?”

“Left.”

“So a wheelchair she could push using only her right arm... that’s gonna be tricky. Might actually be easier for her to move in something fitted with a small anti-grav. Like a hovercraft, you know, but a chair.”

“She won’t be able to feel herself move in one like that,” Fareeha pointed out. “And she’s going to need that feeling, as much as she can retain until Angela clears her to walk again.”

“Crap. Yeah.” Brigitte took a slow pull from the flask again. “I’ve got an idea or two that I could try—and if nothing I can think of will work, I’ll ask Satya for help.”

Fareeha cracked an eyebrow. “Why not ask Chief Engineer Lindholm?”

Brigitte side-eyed her over the flask. “How often do _you_ ask Captain Amari for tactical advice?”

Fareeha hissed through her teeth, as if in pain. “Touché.”

Brigitte laughed at that, and slipped off the windowsill. “Well then, looks like I’m going back to the land of wrenches and hammers. Will keep you updated on whether I whip something out.” She put a hand over Fareeha’s organic shoulder briefly. “You’re a good friend, Fari, looking out for your own like you do.”

Fareeha looked away. “I try to be one.”

“Yes, you do.” Brigitte clapped her shoulder again before walking away.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Day 4, Week 1, Month 1** _

 

On the occasion of something failing to go in accordance with the wishes of the council that decided the actions and direction of Talon—a competitor taking their resources or territory, a potential ally declining their oh-so-generous offer of partnership—the military division executed a solution the council would decide on. Oftentimes, discrete and efficient terror was the council’s desired response, and required merely a specialist or two. In other cases, they wanted a few opposing factions to turn on each other, and sent the rank-and-file troops on a false flag operation. Sometimes, however, the council would prefer merciless brutality to confused suspicion or surgical precision, and employed both the footsoldiers and the specialists in a show of force, in making an example of whoever dared rally against them.

Whenever an operation of that magnitude was agreed upon, the council also appointed its commanding officer. More often than not, that role would become Reaper’s.

Which was the case again, now, the assignment to storm a Helix compound, empty the building of life, its servers of data, and its labs of any prototypes they would find. And his means of doing so were three platoons, each backed by a specialist—himself included.

Sombra had complained, of course, about being stuck with two dozen infantrymen. She moved faster on her own, she had said. She worked better on her own, she had said. She didn’t sign up for babysitting a bunch of trigger-happy morons that would only hold her back, she had said. To which Reaper could only reply that it wasn’t only important _that_ they do the job, this time, it was also important _how_ they do it, otherwise the council would’ve dispatched a third of their current number. At the most.

She was still irritated, spending the trip with hands on a holographic keyboard and eyes on a single display, all visible text encrypted even as she typed to the accompaniment of an incessant, rapid staccato of tiny high-pitched beeps she had set to signal each keystroke, paused only to double-check her work, and kept typing on.

“Do you _have_ to be making that noise?” one of the seventy-two uniformed agents snapped at her sometime halfway through the flight.

“Screw off, soldier boy.”

“What’s so fucking important that you have to drive everyone insane, huh?”

Sombra actually looked up at him at that point, her usual smugness and razor-sharp smirk replaced with undiluted anger. “When’s the last time you remembered to clean your search history, cabrón? You make me forget one line of this code— _one bracket_ —and everything you’ve jerked off to for the last eight months ends up on your social media. And then I’m taking the time I spend on fixing this runtime out of your pay, down to the minute and second.”

Reaper fought a snort at that exchange, particularly at how the agent had gone silent, even as he made a mental note to find room for Sombra away from the assault troops next time. Maybe in the corner of the cockpit, as the hacker had no problems with sitting on floors instead of benches or chairs. The co-pilot seat was taken already, as usual, by Widowmaker curled up as comfortably as she could make herself and asleep, her legs swung over one of the armrests, her head bowed just slightly, and her arms wrapped loosely around herself. Then again, she was a light sleeper, and Sombra had a tendency to hum while working—never mind the clicking of her keyboard—and even if she was too angry to indulge in it this time, they would have to see if Widow could sleep through that.

Next time. Whenever that might be.

Reaper reached over to place a gauntlet over Widowmaker’s shoulder, shook her carefully. “Widow. Wake up.”

A sharper intake of breath, and cognac-golden eyes cracked open.

“Sit up straight, we’ll be touching down soon.”

She acknowledged that with a nod, mumbling her thanks in still drowsy French even as she slipped her feet to the floor, hands folded in her lap after she managed to stop lightly rubbing the left over her right forearm, painted with both the tattoo and the stitches she still bore after her previous deployment.

~*~

Eleven minutes past ten in the morning. Fareeha glared at the watch on her artificial arm’s wrist before letting her sleeve cover it again.

Her contact was supposed to check in today. The hour hadn’t been specified—but from what she remembered from her own career in Helix, matters like this were resolved at the earliest convenience, which usually meant before noon. And even adjusting for the timezones, this would mean either very soon, or running late already.

She had gone through her usual morning routine already—exercise, breakfast, maintenance check on the Raptora and her rocket launcher, a brief chat with any fellow agents she happened to run into—and texted Emily to check in on her. The little Brit seemed to be taking things well; maybe a little too well, considering the state Lena was in and would remain in for months on end, but in a way that made Fareeha feel a little guilty, it was a relief. She never knew how to act or what to do in the face of more emotional outbursts. Emily’s calm temperament was a blessing in that respect. Even when shaken, she still retained some composure, and made it that much easier for Fareeha to try and do something for her.

Speaking of doing something.

Winston was either still asleep after a crashed night, or bent over a terminal. The distant hammering from the room Brigitte had claimed as her own spoke volumes of what she was up to. Muted k-pop seeping through headphones and the scent of motor oil chased Fareeha out of the hangar bay before she had even spotted Hana, bobbing her head to the music and chewing on her brand bubblegum, elbows deep in the entrails of her mecha. Satya had hardly even hummed a response to Fareeha’s greeting, all of her attention absorbed by a simple touch-screen drawing tablet, taken up with a geometric array of spirals and lines that made Fareeha slightly dizzy just from glancing at it. And Angela was always working.

From here, she had two choices. Either find something to occupy herself with as well, or join Reinhardt in more physical training.

~*~

 _{Enemy in my sights,}_ Widowmaker snapped over the comm.

Reaper straightened. “Headcount?”

He could hear the assassin mutter under her breath for a moment before she spoke firmly again. _{...quatre, cinq, six, sept... Eight. Sentries, it seems. Four on set points, four on patrol routes.}_

“How many can you remove silently?”

There was a brief silence as Widowmaker considered the question. _{Four at the least. All, with any luck.}_

“Do it. We’ll storm if you’re spotted.”

_{Understood. Widowmaker, over and out.}_

The comms went silent after that, and Sombra looked up just in time to spot the assassin atop one of the compound’s towers—picking herself up from a prone stance to something closer to a crouch, then slinging her rifle securely over her back, and bracing herself a little before launching herself off the roof. A sharp thrust of her left arm, and her fall became an arc as the grappling hook bit into concrete and she swung herself upwards again to land right atop a guard patrolling the thin, railing-less bridge connecting two of the sentry towers.

Meanwhile, Reaper turned to the squad leaders and lieutenants waiting for his orders. “If Widowmaker silences all sentries successfully, Sombra goes in to disable the security measures she can access and make navigation easier for all teams. Once that’s done, Alpha and Bravo storm through the cargo bay with me, while Charlie digs in at the front entrance to take out any and all targets trying to escape. If anyone is giving us too much trouble, we herd them into open space so Widowmaker can take them out from a distance. Clear?”

A small chorus of ‘yes, sir’s rang out.

“Any questions?”

Silence.

“And I want _no weapon discharges_ in the labs. Is. That. Understood?”

Sombra glanced over to the assault troops to see if they would argue, but apparently none had a death wish developed that far, so she looked up at the sentry towers again—just in time to see Widowmaker throw herself off a bridge connecting the far two, launch her grappling hook again into the bridge’s bottom and wait there for a moment while a sentry walked above her. Then, the assassin swung her legs in a sharp, purposeful motion, gaining enough momentum to flip herself onto the bridge again, landed in a crouch, and pounced on the sentry from behind, throwing him to the bridge’s surface and yanking her right arm to the side in a motion that left no doubt she had slit his throat. A single figure rose from where two had fallen, and in a few quick strides, made her way into the sentry tower. Within seconds, there was the tiniest crackle of static from the comm.

 _{All targets eliminated.}_ Widowmaker didn’t sound _elated_ , exactly—Sombra doubted the sniper could even manage an emotional response of that magnitude—but there was a slightly more animated note in her voice, a stunning contrast to her usual venomous monotone.

Reaper raised a hand to his earpiece. “Good job. Have you located a security terminal?”

_{I am at one right now.}_

“Drop Sombra’s entry point, and let’s get this done.”

 _{Affirmative.}_ A small pause then, as Widowmaker positioned the device despite being scathingly unfamiliar with it. _{Ready. Widowmaker, over and out.}_

“Alright, see you later then,” Sombra nodded at Reaper when he turned to face her with the mask, and waited for him to nod back at her. “Translocating.”

In a flash, she was inside the sentry tower; a body sat crumpled in the corner, the pool of blood around the dead guard’s legs still slowly spreading. Widowmaker was crouched by one of the entrances, her combat knife already cleaned and sheathed at her boot, seven red lenses over her eyes and rifle in hand, its muzzle trailing slowly after targets Sombra couldn’t see just yet.

The hacker wrinkled her nose at the corpse, even as she gritted her teeth against a brief bout of nausea that often came with using her beacons, and placed a hand against the security terminal to initiate the hack. Bright purple tendrils snaked through the circuitry at her touch, and she sat comfortably in the office chair in front of the computers, whistling a J.Lo joint under her breath as she set to her work.

“Yeah, okay. Gabi, I’m sending your boys the compound blueprints, update your HUDs or whatever. I’ll set navpoints to the objectives and open the security doors in a sec.” She looked up as she caught movement out of the corner of her eye; Widowmaker was looking at her, visor retracted onto her forehead, and pointing at her own earpiece for a moment before moving her hand in a horizontal slash across her throat.

 _{How long?}_ Reaper demanded.

“Few minutes. I’ll call once I’m done, over and out.” Sombra tapped her comm off, then swivelled the chair to face the assassin fully. “What, you wanted to talk without anyone else on the line, or?”

“Yes.” Widowmaker rose to her feet, rifle at low ready and a slightly strained look on her face. “...I need to ask a favour again.”

Sombra raised her eyebrows. “Already? You hadn’t paid off the first one yet.”

Widowmaker gritted her teeth for the briefest of moments. “I am aware. _But._ It will keep, and whatever your... machinations are, I’m certain you’ll make good use of my skill in due time, for what I owe you.”

Sombra’s brows knit thoughtfully. “That really doesn’t sound like you want this to be a one-time thing, araña.”

“No, I suppose not... it may not be one.” Widowmaker glanced down for a moment, visibly struggling to swallow her pride and ask a _de facto_ stranger’s help. “I’m not certain yet. But it may become a repeated request on my part.”

“And what are you asking, exactly?” the hacker pressed.

“A trip. A day—perhaps two—at a time, away from Talon’s supervision, to tend to a personal matter in peace.” Widowmaker held her gaze this time, a silent challenge, quite enough to underline that she had no intention of begging.

And Sombra just stared back for a long while, dumbstruck. That much? That much would be _ridiculously easy_ to arrange. Easier, in fact, than setting up whatever she’d want to use the assassin for in return. The weird thing was that Widowmaker mentioned a personal matter—Talon had made damn sure she had no personal life to speak of, and as sure as possible that there was no person behind her callsign to want a life. The last ‘personal matter’ she had ‘tended to’ was repeatedly slipping away to score a quick fuck with Tracer, as far as Sombra knew, and Sombra _knew_. That, though, had stopped quite some time ago, and was extremely unlikely to start up again, what with Tracer currently almost dead and in general having an actual girlfriend now—

_Ohhhhh._

“You want to see the redhead again, don’t you.”

The way Widowmaker gritted her teeth again and looked away for a moment was as good as actually hearing her say yes. Sombra took pity, and decided against teasing her about it.

“When?”

“As soon as you can arrange it.”

“When we’re done with this joint, then.” Sombra jerked her chin towards the security terminal. “Don’t know if I’ll get past Gabi with just, taking you for a ride after we get the ‘mission accomplished, return to base’ signal, but—”

Widowmaker shook her head, cutting her off. “Gabriel will allow it, if I make it clear that I want this.”

“Okay then. Guess we’re skipping the debrief this mission.” An ASCII sugar skull bloomed on every screen of the terminal, signalling Sombra that she had full access. “We’ll hammer out the terms on the way. Or maybe after you get back and decide if it’s gonna be a regular thing. Sounds cool to you, araña?”

Widowmaker gave her a firm nod. “That is acceptable.”

“Sweet.” Sombra swivelled her chair around again to face the keyboards, and made a show of cracking her knuckles with a smirk. “Now. Let’s get this show on the road.”

~*~

“Still no word from your informant?”

Fareeha looked up at the soft sound of her wife’s voice, then shook her head. “None. I was supposed to hear from him today, and it’s getting late; maybe it’s just a busy day at work, but I should have received _something_ by now—”

She broke off when her phone pinged with an alert of an incoming message. A few favours were still owed to her, after a soaring career in Helix Securities. What little she had already called in guaranteed that she still had access to her old corporate e-mail account, giving her—and by extension, the entire new Overwatch—a source of information that didn’t always make it to public channels.

It was valuable, and it was good to have it. Even when the information was as horrible as it was this time.

“Fareeha?” Angela prompted carefully, even as she watched the set of her wife’s jaw harden.

“Apparently there’s been a Talon raid on the base where my contact works,” Fareeha said flatly. “Well. Used to work. Over half hundred agents, Reaper, and Widowmaker wiped the whole complex of life. No survivors, the computers all wiped down to and including the operating system... except for the one with security footage of Talon murdering the employees. I guess we’re not modernizing Jack and Lena’s weapons after all.”

“I’m sorry,” Angela offered quietly.

Fareeha nodded her thanks, even as her lips pressed into a tight line. “This is going to set Helix back years.”

“All the more reason for us to pick up the spare, isn’t it?”

That finally coaxed a smile out of Fareeha. “Very true, and very wise.” She pushed her chair back and rose, her shoulders squared regardless of the burdens she carried. “I’m going to check if there’s something to be done, but I’ll be okay later.”

Angela nodded, and saw her off after pulling her close for a brief kiss. And kept herself from sighing until after the door had slammed shut after Fareeha.

There was always something to be done around the Watchpoints, after years of having been unused, uninhabited, falling into disrepair. If Fareeha kept pushing herself as hard and as far as she did, she would get half of that work done by herself, while the Lindholms and Satya Vasvani completed the other half. And there were no signs of her stopping or slowing down anytime soon.

Angela felt her lips quirk into an autoironic smile. They were a perfect match in that respect, too.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Day 5, Week 1, Month 1** _

 

This was crazy.

No one in their right mind would want to be locked in with Widowmaker, not alone, not without any surveillance devices, not for a second. And yet, that’s where Sombra found herself. For hours. Of her own volition.

They barely had enough space for the both of them and their equipment—in fact, Sombra was perched atop a few piled-up crates of hers—and less than enough for the assassin to stretch her legs; she was sitting with her back against a bulkhead and feet against the opposite one, still clad in her combat suit, the heavy gauntlet on her left arm rested comfortably across her thighs, her right arm braced lightly against the floor.

Her eyes were open, so she was awake, even though Sombra had expected her to sleep through transit like she usually would.

Heh. More than just herself uncomfortable with being locked in together, Sombra supposed.

“Don’t you ever get bored of staring into the same spot on the wall?”

Widowmaker took a moment before turning her head to the side and slightly up to look at Sombra, moving for the first time since she had settled down. It was hard to count the subtle, slow-motion rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, or that she did blink every few seconds, or that the set of her lips had tightened a little during takeoff. That was it. No going paler, no gritting of teeth, no visible struggle with nausea.

God, this woman had to have guts of steel.

Not like her track record of eating nothing but field rations and whatever the Talon mess called food suggested otherwise.

“Don’t _you_ ever get bored of being a pest?”

Sombra rolled her eyes. “Come on, araña. Pass the time with me.”

“I think you have plenty of matters to occupy yourself with,” Widowmaker nodded towards the nine holographic screens arranged in three rows in front of the hacker.

“Oh, but that’s not the saaaame...” Sombra stretched her arms over her head, arching her back as far as it would go, then leaned forward to shift herself a little where she was sitting. “Don’t you need to stretch? You’ve been stock still for hours.”

“I’m a sniper,” Widowmaker reminded dryly. “I can stay ‘stock still’ for days.”

Sombra raised her eyebrows. “What if the weather goes bad?”

“Cold, wind, and rain don’t concern me.”

“Hunger?”

“No.”

“Stiffness?”

“ _No._ ” Widowmaker threw the hacker a venomous glare. “Why are you talking to me?”

Sombra raised her arms in a shrug. “Just trying to be nice.”

“If you want to be nice, then be silent,” Widowmaker snapped at her, then turned away when Sombra lifted her hands in a defensive gesture and pointedly looked back to her screens.

So small talk was not going to get her anywhere, Sombra supposed. At least now, she knew one thing that would bother Widowmaker without fail. Noise.

She wondered briefly whether it still meant it’d be okay for her to hum while she was working, then decided she didn’t give a shit and just went ahead, an old and familiar tune she didn’t remember the name of making it easier to cross-reference a few reports and build a composite image of the situation—and to pinpoint misinformation she was going to take out of the informant’s ass. With interest.

At some point, she had glanced to Widowmaker again. The assassin was still sitting like when Sombra had left her alone, staring into her favourite spot on the opposite wall, apparently as unaffected by the tune as by the slight atmospheric turbulence and the muted thrum of the plane’s engines. She didn’t look like she was capable of having a single emotion, as per usual, and Sombra was getting better at recognizing when Widowmaker was annoyed. No signs of that, right now.

Huh. Songs weren’t noise, then.

Sombra checked the clock in the corner of one of her screens. “We’ll be touching down soon.”

Widowmaker acknowledged that with a nod.

“Want a cough drop?”

“No.”

“Cause takeoffs and landings are murder, even if you’re used to—”

“ _Sombra_.”

“Okay, fine!”

~*~

Emily threw her scarf over the back of her neck, slipped her hair out from under it. It was the same one she had gotten from Lena for their first Christmas together, and it helped to have it with her; she had kept it in her purse for the past few days, like an amulet, like just being able to sneak a touch of the knitted fabric every now and then would protect her and aid her girlfriend, like things were going to turn out okay.

She decided to walk home from work rather than take the tube, to clear her head and get at least a little bit of what could be classified as exercise. If she wanted to get a good night’s sleep, for a change, she’d have to be a little more tired than just from work.

In a few days, Angela would be getting Lena out of coma. Her girl would still be hurt, and unable to get out of bed, but at least she would be conscious. Able to see. Able to speak. And no longer so terribly still.

Unless, of course, there would be a problem in getting her to wake up.

Going out of coma wasn’t like switching the light on. Even if everything went right, even if Lena did wake up, things were going to take time, and effort, and patience, and pain. And nothing was going to be easy.

But as long as Lena wanted or needed her around, Emily would stay.

A hint of movement caught her eye, and she stopped walking as she saw a gray-and-brown tabby nosing around the rubbish bags piled up in the back alley that ran perpendicular to the street Emily was on. And despite everything that had happened over the week, Emily smiled.

“Hi, kitty.”

The tabby tilted its head, watching her carefully, even as she reached into her purse to dig out a sandwich she hadn’t had the time to eat during lunch break and plucked a slice of ham from inside it. Ears perked up, and the cat sniffed the air a few times, eyes on the meat in her hand.

“Hungry?” Emily took a few steps into the back alley, then very slowly lowered herself down to one knee and extended the ham towards the cat. “Here, I won’t hurt you... come get your dinner... here, kitty...”

Emboldened by her effort to stay as still as she could, soft tone, and the prospect of an easy bite, the cat took an experimental step towards Emily. Then another, and another, until it came close enough to pluck the ham from her fingers and settled down to eat in peace. Emily felt herself smile again, and was just about to try petting the stray—then all of a sudden, the tabby’s head snapped up, and it snatched the remains of its bounty to scurry away between the rubbish bags.

She looked up as well, and froze at the sight of five figures gathered at the mouth of the alleyway—two omnics, each with a tattoo spray-painted on their shoulder plate and forearms modified to house a knife compartment, their facelights blazing orange instead of the default blue, facing off against three white highschoolers, one with a crowbar, one with a pipe wrench, one with a baseball bat, all clad in what they probably considered to be rebel-wear.

For a very long time, the entirety of thought process Emily was capable of had boiled down to _oh, bugger._

“Out to enjoy the evening?” one of the punks challenged. “Put a flower under the clockface memorial? Shine my shoes, maybe?”

“It would be a great improvement to this fine evening if you ceased contributing to the greenhouse effect with your breathing,” the omnic on the left shot back with utter calmness. “Why don’t you sod off to praise little baby Jesus instead of polluting our street?”

Another of the highschoolers snorted. “If you bots want Jesus, I’d be happy to speed you on your way.”

Knives were unsheathed and a baseball bat tapped against an open hand and stances shifted to allow for easier fighting. And then, as if on cue, five heads turned towards Emily, crouched down in the dimly-lit dead end with nowhere to run.

_Oh, **bugger.**_

One of the omnics looked at the three humans again. “Losing side takes the blame for the bystander?”

The highschooler with a crowbar chuckled. “Didn’t realize you scrap piles knew the meaning of honour.”

“Didn’t realize you meat sacks knew the meaning of reason,” the omnic riposted flatly.

Emily swallowed hard, the cold blast of realization that she was going to die hitting her for the second time within the week. The five thugs blocking her escape fell on each other, and all she could do was frantically look for a way out, a lower wall to crawl over, a roof gutter to try to climb onto—

Then, the scene abruptly changed as a tall, lithe figure dropped down from above, sticking the landing between Emily and the gangs at war, and leapt forth at them like the wrath of God.

One of the highschoolers wheezed as his windpipe was crushed with a vicious blow delivered by the side of a gauntleted hand. An omnic was next, a lunge with the blade coming for a low thrust cut short as their weapon hand was seized at the wrist and guided away, their neck in a vice-like grip, turning their momentum against them as the omnic’s head was driven into the wall with enough force to crash the crown of their head, a distorted sputter rattling out of their vocabulator as they crumpled. The other omnic attempted to retaliate, only to be met with a hard elbow strike to the jaw, sending them sprawling backwards even as their knife was deftly plucked out of their hand and immediately found home in another highscooler’s belly.

Widowmaker slammed the teenager’s back against the wall, and keeping eye contact all the while, yanked the knife upwards in a smooth motion of her arm, a harmonious ripple of her wrist and elbow and shoulder, until the blade creaked against the highschooler’s sternum.

The third highschooler took the sound as his cue to drop the crowbar and run; Widowmaker wrenched the knife free—letting the boy she had just gutted like a fish slump down to the cobblestones—deftly flicked it in her hand, and threw it after him. He had barely managed three steps before yowling in pain and falling to his knees, the hilt of the knife sticking out between his shoulderblades, and then Widowmaker was pouncing like a panther to throw him face-down to the ground. One of her hands yanked the knife out, earning another scream, even as the other wound into the highschooler’s short hair; a sharp tug tilting his head back, and the knife was brought to his throat, and all Emily could do was turn away and squeeze her eyes shut.

If only a wet splattering sound and a sickening gurgle were that easy to block out.

Widowmaker rolled the knife over an open palm and allowed it to tumble from her fingers in an almost playful gesture, then rose from over the corpse and swiped the crowbar up, marched back to the omnic stirring on the ground, slammed a boot against their chest to force them back down, and speared the crowbar through their faceplate in a brutal, two-handed blow. As soon as the last, twitching short-circuit finished rolling through the metal hands and feet, she leaned down and plucked the memory chip from the omnic’s shattered head, broke it in half in her fingers, and repeated that treatment with the second wreckage. Then, and only then, she looked at Emily.

Who was almost pressing her back into the rubbish bags, and desperately thinking _none of this would’ve happened if only I didn’t have to try and pet every cat I see._

Booted feet shifted, and Widowmaker marched towards the terrified redhead—and froze in place, mid-step, when Emily frantically tried to back away at least a little bit further. Then, as if in a dream, Emily watched the assassin slow her motions down to what she herself had been doing while approaching the tabby that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. Widowmaker took one last small step forward, braced her gauntleted left hand against her knee, in clear sight, leaned down, and hypnotizingly slowly extended her right, palm up, in an inviting gesture.

Emily stared at that hand for a good while, too scared to comprehend what was being offered, too scared by what she had seen that hand do—just now, and a few days prior—too scared to breathe in anything other than short, horrified gasps. Then, it finally clicked that Widowmaker was trying to help her up, and dear Lord, wasn’t that ironic?

The assassin still had her own knife strapped securely to her right shin. She hadn’t even needed to use it against the five she had just murdered.

Murdered for the sake of keeping Emily safe.

Murdered.

 _Curiosity killed the cat_ , as the saying went, and in that moment, Emily found herself wishing she were a cat, able to squeeze herself between the rubbish bags, able to run away—

“Take my hand, ma petite,” Widowmaker said softly.

Emily glanced up from the black glove to the golden eyes, and held that wary yet expectant gaze until her hand had slowly started to rise, as if of its own volition, and Widowmaker gave her a tiny, encouraging nod.

 _Curiosity killed the cat_ , Emily could hear her common sense screaming at her, even as she slowly reached out and placed her hand in the one extended to her, open, waiting.

There was a brief victorious flicker in Widowmaker’s eyes, and all the panic came shrieking back when long fingers locked around Emily’s hand, and the same arm that had just gutted a seventeen-year-old gave another smooth pull, forcing Emily onto her feet.

She was too scared, again, to really register being turned and pulled close, so that her side was against Widowmaker’s chest, and to try tearing her arms away before the assassin had pulled them up, placed Emily’s hands at a reinforced plate protecting her nape.

“Arms around my neck, and hold on tightly.” Widowmaker’s tone made clear that it was not a request.

And Emily, still too stunned and too scared to really think, just laced her hands where they were put, laced them as hard as she could manage.

In one smooth motion, Widowmaker leaned down and swept Emily’s feet off the street, her right arm under the redhead’s knees. Then, she braced her legs, and thrust her left arm sharply up, tilting the hand back to trigger her grapple. The hook lanced out, bit into the solid brickwork above, and Emily felt Widowmaker leap up to assist the cable that was reeling in already; she barely managed to choke back a sharp gasp when they were pulled off the ground.

“Quiet,” the assassin hissed, then swung herself forward, the momentum enough to carry them both over the rooftop and onto the street on the other side.

Widowmaker gave a tiny grunt, muffled behind gritted teeth, as her feet hit the cobblestones again. The grappling hook retracted into her gauntlet with a small _clink,_ and she placed her left arm around Emily’s shoulders before carefully lowering her to the ground, letting her stand on her own again. Then, the assassin stepped back, gave Emily a brief but careful once-over, smoothed out the redhead’s coat over her shoulders, and nodded firmly. Keeping eye contact all the while, Widowmaker raised her left arm to fire her grapple again, and pulled herself back up onto the rooftop—her ascent ending in a graceful somersault, her landing stable in a crouch—and stared after Emily for a moment longer before turning over her shoulder and disappearing from view.

Then, and only then, Emily found that she could breathe again.

And after she could breathe again, the full weight of what had just taken place right in front of her slammed into her like a speeding truck. Emily’s knees trembled and gave out, and she barely managed to clamp a hand over her mouth before a sob tore free, tears of fear and shock and confusion finally trickling down her face.

She stayed right where she had collapsed, crying herself out on an empty street, for a very long while. Then, she picked herself up, and walked home on soft legs, without stopping anymore, a hand clutching tightly at her scarf.

~*~

Widowmaker let out a long breath when the light in the window of a fifth floor’s bedroom went out. She clicked her visor on, and put one of its lenses to her scope, singling out one of the red figures brought into focus. One that was down on its side in bed, tightly curled around a pillow drawn up to its chest.

The redhead had made her way home safely, eventually, without any more misadventure. Widowmaker had followed over rooftops, after retrieving her rifle from where she had stashed it, holding back the desire to simply walk the street by her side.

After all, she was a lot of what the girl was afraid of, and with good reason.

And the fact that she knew this desire was an unnecessary, stupid risk had also played a part in her decision.

It was a desire that stemmed from the tight bundle in Widowmaker’s chest, the part of herself she was still getting used to having again. The part she had significant trouble reconnecting with. But just because things were hard didn’t mean they were impossible. And just because she barely had any idea of how to go about them didn’t mean she couldn’t learn. It just meant a challenge, and an effort worth her time.

Widowmaker stilled herself, and imagined seeing the redhead hurt. The reaction was immediate—a tide of dismay washing through her chest, leaving a coppery taste in her mouth, her heart clenching, her back bowing under that force.

She quickly backpedalled from the thought, and merely an aftertaste of the emotion remained. Taking a moment to recover, Widowmaker shook her head a little; she was still taken by surprise how powerful these things could be.

After considering her next step for a moment, Widowmaker thought carefully, _I don’t want to see her hurt_ , and waited for a response.

Affirmation.

Well, now. That was something more or less solid.

 _I am going to watch over her,_ Widowmaker spoke silently within herself, and watched that tight bundle within her heart uncoil a little. No fear. No doubt. For the first time, something that came from _in there_ and wasn’t a howl, wasn’t steeped in desperation that tainted all it came in contact with, wasn’t leaving wet, trailing footprints that echoed through the rest of her being, infected her, compromised her. Instead, there was a faint sense of purpose.

That was good. That was acceptable.

That was what she was going to do.

It was the first thing she wanted since Lena had decided to terminate their... involvement. And wanting to see Lena one more time had been a craving, scorching in its power, threatening to unmake her if left unsated for too long. Now this—this was different. Quiet. Calmer. More of a resolution than a surrender to a burning need.

More of a choice than a collar and muzzle.

Widowmaker breathed deeply, and left her perch to scout out the surrounding streets, familiarize herself with the area.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Genji voice* MERRY! CHRISTMAS!
> 
> additionally,
> 
>     #Widowmaker: "the first step to having fun and being yourself is any murder"
> 
> is a tag I have typed, uncoerced, with these two hands and ten fingers.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Day 6, Week 1, Month 1** _

 

Fishing her phone, buzzing with a new message alert, out of her right pocket with her left hand while trying to keep both herself and her backpack from falling over as the bus driver braked hard took quite a bit of effort, but ultimately, Emily managed.

 _Arrived at the station,_ Fareeha had just texted her. _How’s the traffic?_

 _A little worse than usual, but not cataclysmic,_ Emily texted back. _I think I’ll make it in a little over half an hour._

After a moment, her phone buzzed in her hand again.

_Take your time. Our train leaves in 1h 04mins. I thought it would be better to wait a little than to be late._

Emily felt some tension drain from her shoulders. _Definitely, I’m glad we think alike. I’ll see you soon._

Fareeha replied with an emoji of a thumbs-up, as if she was unsure what to say, but wanted to acknowledge having read Emily’s message. The redhead smiled a little, and put her phone back in her pocket, the bus slugging its way through afternoon traffic.

It had taken about forty-five minutes, but finally, Emily could shrug the backpack on again, and she wandered through the train station’s lobby, looking for a familiar face.

Of course, she didn’t think that Fareeha would show up in her blue-and-golden rocket-propelled armour suit. She was quite aware that the ex-Helix officer owned actual clothes, and could easily give Lena a run for her money when they tried to outdress each other—which had happened on every occasion that required formal wear, but didn’t allow for Lena’s blue-gray Royal Air Force uniform and Fareeha’s sandy Egyptian Army summer uniform and dark green Thunderbolt beret. Well, every occasion save one, when Lena had gallantly declared she was not going to dress better than either of the brides.

Still, Emily had not expected to see Fareeha in a black leather jacket over a flannel shirt tucked into urban camo-patterned cargo pants, hands in her pockets, leaning her back against a wall just casually enough to tap the point of one her steel-toed bovver boots against the floor.

She pushed off the wall the moment she spotted Emily, pulling her hands out of her pockets so she could wave at her with a smile. She was wearing a single glove, Emily took notice, black leather fitting snugly over her left hand and disappearing under her sleeve. Hiding her prosthesis in such a way was likely an attempt to draw less attention to herself.

If her intent had been not to draw attention, Emily thought even as she waved back, it would’ve been easier to achieve if Fareeha hadn’t dressed to make every lesbian and bisexual in a three-mile radius feel themselves become progressively gayer with each second spent within eyesight of her.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Emily offered. “Rush hour traffic.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Fareeha’s eyes flicked to Emily’s camping pack, and her expression took on a wary quality. “Are you planning a weekend trip after?”

“Um, about that...” Emily averted her eyes for a moment. “I took a few days off work... would you mind if I stayed for a bit longer than originally planned?”

“Not at all, and I’m sure Lena will deeply appreciate it, but did something happen?”

“Yes, actually.” Emily paused for a moment, considering what to say next. Because it seemed like _‘well, kind of a funny story there, you see, the gal who put my girlfriend in the hospital a few days ago just happened along and murdered five people to keep me safe when I wandered into a human-omnic gang war on my way home from work last night’_ didn’t exactly seem like something to casually drop in public.

She didn’t realize she had let the silence drag on until a leather-clad steel hand came lightly against her arm, undisguised worry in Fareeha’s eyes now.

“Sorry, I just—” Emily took a deep breath to calm herself down. Now she had to give Fareeha some kind of explanation. “When I was going home yesterday, I saw three teens and two omnics fight each other to the death in a back alley. And I watched all of them die there. And I just... really want to get away from King’s Row right now, if only for a bit.”

Technically, she hadn’t said anything untrue, but the lie of omission still made her feel a sick squirm in her gut. Particularly when Fareeha’s hand closed around her arm protectively.

“Were you hurt?”

“No. Scared out of my wits, is all.”

“Would it help you more to talk about it,” Fareeha asked softly, “or to stop thinking about it?”

 _The former,_ Emily wanted to say. But the mere thought of lying even further to a caring, loving friend made her feel even worse on the spot.

“The latter.”

“Okay. Then let’s get going.” Fareeha indicated Emily’s backpack with her right hand. “That must be heavy; let me carry it for you.”

“What? No, there’s no need...”

“I insist.” Fareeha gave a cheeky, slightly self-deprecating smile. “I’d feel really strange if I let a pretty girl walk around with a backpack, and didn’t carry anything myself. And if you’re going to stay for a few days, then we’ll have to grab groceries after we get off the train, anyway. I’ll let you carry one bag.”

Despite everything, Emily snickered, handing her camping pack to Fareeha. “Oh, so gallant.”

Fareeha shrugged the backpack on, adjusting the straps to the broader set of her shoulders. As she raised her arms to do so, the edges of her leather jacket lifted off her belt buckle; Emily’s mind blanked for a moment, and she couldn’t stop herself from pointing one finger at the circular disc of embossed metal, polished to a bright sheen.

“I-is that...”

“Guns N’ Roses,” Fareeha confirmed with a smile, then motioned Emily to walk with her towards their platform.

“Of course it’s Guns N’ Roses,” Emily sighed even as she followed. Had Lena been with them, she would immediately argue in favour of Queen being the superior rock band—not necessarily because she really thought so, but to trick Fareeha into talking about something she had passionate opinions on. “Do you have a favourite song?”

With a smirk, Fareeha lifted her hands to mimic playing an electric guitar. “I see you standin’, standin’ on your own; it’s such a lonely place for you, for you to be; if you need a shoulder, or if you need a friend, I’ll be here standing until the bitter end...”

Emily burst out laughing. Of course it was _Rocket Queen._

“Fareeha?”

“Hm?”

Emily gave her an exasperated look, still smiling. “How, exactly, did you mix plaid and camo and made it look good?”

Fareeha laughed as well, her cheeks darkening a little, and answered with a wink of her eye highlighted with the udjat tattoo.

~*~

Widowmaker looked up from her rifle’s scope when the two below her boarded their train, and briefly entertained the thought of following atop a wagon’s roof. Very briefly.

They were bound for Plymouth, apparently, and the young Amari’s role as the de facto leader of this laughable spectre of Overwatch made it clear that this was more than a friendly trip to pass the weekend. Had she followed, she would likely track them back to a safehouse.

A safehouse where, judging from the redhead’s presence, Tracer was hospitalized. Which meant she couldn’t give its location to her superiors without preventing the girl from seeing Lena, or in the worst case scenario, endangering her. And if she could not give the location of an Overwatch base to her superiors, it was safer for herself as much as for everyone else involved if she did not know its location at all.

Widowmaker frowned, deep in thought, even as she withdrew from her perch and started making her way back to the rendezvous point where Sombra was supposed to meet her. The base wasn’t anywhere in London, obviously. It couldn’t be located in any other major city, either; Talon’s intelligence teams would have sniffed it out by now. And it couldn’t be in the countryside—a giant gorilla with a jetpack, a bubblegum pink mecha, an armour-clad knight with a rocket-propelled warhammer, and a cyborg with the silvery casing of his body cast in green highlights, to name just a few, would be rather likely to stand out.

She gave a soft ‘ah’ of realization to herself, the answer clarifying in her mind. The city of Plymouth was home to the biggest naval base not only in the United Kingdom, but in the entirety of Europe—meaning it would be that much easier for Overwatch to pull a favour whenever they needed a submarine dock, and to slip in and out unnoticed—and there used to be a Watchpoint set up in one of the remote isles off the coast of Cornwall, didn’t there?

Amélie had been invited to visit once, hadn’t she?

She closed her eyes for a moment to concentrate, and then there was the smell of brine filling her nose, the breeze whipping against her cheeks and through her hair and leaving a slightly salty taste on her lips, the guttural cries of fulmars and the creaking warble of razorbills and the modulated wails of puffins underlined by the murmur of waves endlessly beating against the shore of the small island, one of the smallest in its archipelago, its rocky beach frequented by wild seals, its coasts a breeding ground for seabirds, its highest point crested with a stone cairn. She couldn’t remember the name, foreign to her tongue as it was—but she knew that Gabriel would put the name to her description within seconds, if she chose to ask.

The set of her jaw tightened even as she opened her eyes again. The emotions, with all their vividness and consuming intensity, were quite enough, and she did not need memories to flood her like that as well, thank you _very_ much.

There was a sensation of something being severed inside her, and Widowmaker breathed more easily.

For now, she decided, it would be best to let the island remain as it always had been, and the Watchpoint to stay forgotten. Later... only time would tell.

~*~

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Emily spoke up when they exited the store.

Fareeha gave her a puzzled look. “What is it?”

Emily gestured to Fareeha’s ungloved hand. “I only took notice just now, when you were putting your card away—why do you wear your wedding ring there?”

“Oh.” Fareeha gathered her words for a moment, looking into the distance, then gave a shrug, or as much of one as she could while carrying Emily’s camping pack on her back and a reusable bag full of groceries in each hand. “Well, I wear it on the right hand partly because if I wanted to wear it on the left, I would need to have it welded on.” She gave a one-shouldered shrug with her left arm again to indicate it. “I’m not saying I don’t _like_ this arm—it’s steadier for launching concussion missiles than the one it’s a replacement for had been, it has a stronger grip, and it lets me carry hot things without ever being burnt—it has a lot of advantages, some of them stemming directly from the fact that I can’t feel what I’m touching with it, and I can’t hurt it no matter what I make it do. It’s also something an old friend had built for me, and it’s all the more important because of that. But I like being able to feel that I’m wearing my wedding ring. It’s a good reminder of what my life is like now, of what I had been blessed with... it makes me happy to find it there, and all I have to do for that is to flick my thumb over it.”

She went silent for a moment, a tender look in her eyes, before turning to Emily again.

“As for why I’m wearing it on the index finger instead of the ring finger—you might have noticed that, at our wedding, we had put the rings on each other’s right index finger?”

Emily nodded. “I had assumed it was a traditional thing.”

“It is. Apparently, it’s also common to switch it to the left ring finger after the wedding. Angela had never done that.” Fareeha paused for a moment. “I had asked her about it, once, if she kept wearing hers on her right hand because I wouldn’t wear mine on my left. I didn’t want to make her feel sorry for me, or like she couldn’t wear it where she wanted to. She explained where that tradition had come from. It’s because the right hand had, historically, been the one used for oaths and pledges, and placing the wedding ring on the index finger—the most visible and the most often used one—meant to highlight that it was the mark of such a pledge, of its importance, and not just a display of wealth or a pretty bauble. That what it symbolizes is much greater than the value of the gold it’s made of.” She smiled, a little uncertainly, as if half-expecting a reprimand or ridicule for speaking aloud of such an intimate matter. “I like that explanation. I like it enough to want to adopt it—to show my wife just how dear to me she is. And I know she understands that gesture, since she was the one to explain it to me in the first place, and that it makes her happy to see me wearing my ring like she’s wearing hers.”

“That’s incredibly sweet,” Emily said softly. “Thank you for telling me... and I’m glad you two found each other.”

Fareeha ducked her head a little. “Me, too.”

They walked in silence for a moment before Emily realized something.

“Wait just a tick. Isn’t the airport the other way?”

“We’re going to the docks,” Fareeha corrected calmly. “It’s easier to get where we’re going undetected by sea than by sky, even if it takes a bit longer.”

“Huh. A ship, then?”

“Submarine.”

Emily stared for a moment, dumbstruck. “Are you _serious?_ Which one of your people has the training to drive a bloody _submarine?”_

Fareeha chuckled. “Lena’s skill is unparalleled, yes, but we’re lucky enough to have more than one pilot in our ranks.”

After that, they made their way through the docks without speaking more—and without ever being asked what in God’s name they were doing there, Emily noted. She wondered briefly whether it should worry her, but Fareeha seemed calm, as if she had been expecting exactly that, and walked with a sense of purpose indicating she knew very well where she was going, so Emily decided to trust her in this matter, as well.

It wasn’t long before they walked onto a pier, a vessel of roughly oval shape with a more conical nose moored next to it. Fareeha put both of her grocery bags into her right hand, then banged her left fist on the hatchway. Moments later, it slid open, no doubt opened remotely from the inside; Fareeha gestured Emily to come on board, then followed, shutting the entrance behind them.

“You’re late!” came a yell from the direction of the cockpit. Then, there were rapid bootfalls, and a mildly irritated young woman—fresh out of her teens, really—of obvious Eastern Asian descent, four strokes of pink warpaint on her cheeks. “Oh, you went shopping again, that’s why.”

“Yes, and I’m sorry.” Fareeha fumbled with her grocery bags for a moment, handed a flat pastry box to her. “Here. Proof.”

The pilot’s eyebrows rose almost to the hairline. “Shit, where did you get hodu-gwaja in England?!”

“So am I forgiven for being late?” Fareeha quipped with a smile.

“Depends on how good these are,” the pilot shot back. “Let’s stow the cargo and get moving already, I’ve spent too much time in the same chair doing nothing today.”

“In a sec.” Fareeha put the grocery bags on the submarine’s floor to place her right arm around Emily’s shoulders. “Emily, I want you to meet Hana Song, our second-newest member and an incredible asset to the team. Hana, this is Emily.”

The pilot gave Emily a nod. “Tracer’s girlfriend, I remember.” She extended a hand, and Emily shook it; Hana’s grip was just firm enough to spell out _don’t underestimate me_. “It’s good you’ll be there when she wakes up.”

“Thank you,” Emily offered, unsure what else to say.

“Emily will be staying at the Watchpoint until our next supply run,” Fareeha spoke up again. “So I decided to stock up a bit more now, rather than risk running out and a panic run later.”

“Makes sense.” Hana waved Fareeha to help her put the groceries in storage crates bolted to the floor and bulkheads of the submarine—some of them functioning like a refrigerator, Emily noticed. “You picked up anything specifically for Tracer?”

“Yeah, why?”

“’Cause I swear I’d send you on the third shopping trip in a row if you hadn’t.” Hana winked at Fareeha, then examined a jar in her hand. “Tikka masala sauce? Yeah, she’s gonna love that.”

“I know,” Fareeha replied dryly.

The pilot gave Emily an amused look. “I guess having you along was of help, huh?”

“I should hope so,” Emily said with a small smile. Then, a flash of realization hit her. “Wait, you were the one piloting the pink robot, weren’t you?”

“The one and only.” Hana grinned. “No ‘get in the fucking robot, Shinji’ jokes, please.”

“...What are you talking about?”

“ _Good_ answer.”

“Hana, go start the engines,” Fareeha interrupted. “I’ll handle the rest.”

“Sure, rocket mom!” Hana rolled her eyes, even as she got up and walked towards the cockpit again. “Hana, go start the engines! Hana, go to your room! Hana, why did you whoop my ass in Street Fighter again!”

Fareeha gave a quiet groan, but there was a spark of satisfaction in her eyes when she noticed that the pilot hadn’t forgotten to take the box of sweets she had bought for her.

“She seems like a colourful character,” Emily offered.

Fareeha coughed softly. “That is definitely one way of saying it.”

“Is she going to give you grief for being late?”

“I don’t think she is,” Fareeha replied after a moment’s consideration, even as the deck below their feet vibrated slowly as the engines murmured to life. “But if yes, the worst thing that can happen is that she’ll make me play a game older than she is, and beat me every time. Again.”

There was a reverent _‘oh, fuck me’_ from the direction of the cockpit before a bellow of “ _’Reeha!”_

“Yeah?!” Fareeha roared back.

 _“_ **_You’re off the hook!_ ** _”_

Fareeha snickered at that, while Emily watched her with amazement.

“Okay, I’ve seen you interact with Lena—but do you let all your underlings talk to you that way?”

“Actually,” Fareeha admitted, still smiling, “Hana outranks me.”

“What?”

“I’ve only ever gotten to the rank of Naqib—Captain, the same as my mother—during my career in the Egyptian Army,” Fareeha explained. “Hana was instructed to deploy with us after earning the rank of Soryeong—the United Nations equivalent of that is Major, the rank above mine.”

Emily frowned a little at that. “Instructed to deploy? So, you mean she hadn’t left the military like you have?”

Fareeha shook her head, the golden beads in her hair clicking softly, her expression serious again. “No. She’s technically still on active duty, but her superiors found some loopholes to make this a special deployment of a sort. My guess is, the South Korean government hadn’t forgotten that it was Overwatch who ended the Omnic Crisis—and is going to try and cash in the favour of lending us their best, most decorated MEKA pilot if the East China Sea omnium ever breaks the stalemate against them.”

“Do you think you’d be able to disable it?” Emily asked quietly.

Fareeha looked down for a second, gritting her teeth for a moment. “I don’t think we’ll ever have the strength, funding, manpower, or unity necessary to do anything that the combined militaries of several East and Southeast Asian countries haven’t achieved already.”

~*~

Widowmaker rested her hands on the small of her back, arched her shoulders with a small groan. “Was that all?”

“That was all,” Sombra confirmed, slamming the hatch shut behind them and setting to secure the crates they had just carried onboard the plane into place. “Heavy, I know, but at least there’s less of them than last time.”

That much was true, Widowmaker supposed—the pile was half as tall as when they flew in. She didn’t waste time on wondering where the rest had gone, or how much the contents had changed since. It was none of her concern.

“So.” Sombra hopped atop the crates again, gave Widowmaker a curious look. “Have you decided whether you want trips like this to be a regular thing?”

Widowmaker was silent for a long moment.

_Is it in any way the responsible, or prudent, or wise thing to do?_

_No_ , she knew the answer was.

_Do I want to?_

_Yes_ , that tiny bundle inside her chest murmured.

She looked up at the hacker again. “I do.”

Sombra nodded at that, simply taking it on board. “How often?”

“...I don’t know,” Widowmaker admitted, ducking her head slightly. “When are you going to come here again?”

Sombra gave her a careful look. “You know, if you’re gonna just piggyback onto the flight I’m taking anyway, I can take you along for free.”

She regretted that offer immediately when Widowmaker’s eyes narrowed and the set of her jaw hardened, and Sombra took a moment to file away what the assassin looked like when she was really, really fucking angry.

“Do you think this is a kindness? It is anything but,” Widowmaker snarled, taking a step towards the hacker. “I. _Loathe._ Being indebted. I came to you and offered a satisfactory arrangement—to trade favours whenever I need your skill, and you have use of mine—yet what you want to do with that is toss it back in my face and insult me for good measure?! I would rather not have what I wanted of you than endure your pity!”

“Okay, okay, wow!” Sombra shouted, hands lifted defensively, leaning back from the furious assassin. “I’m sorry, alright? I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Then quit testing my patience, and say what you _do_ mean to,” Widowmaker snapped at her, no less angry.

“Listen, would it be more acceptable if I just made use of you like Talon does when you’re deployed?”

“By far,” Widowmaker hissed at her.

“Wait, _seriously?”_

“At least it would mean you are treating me like an equal!”

“Okay. Alright.” Sombra took a deep breath. “I’m gonna be keeping score. We’re two to zero, by the way. I’ll cash in everything you owe me, on my own terms, and I’ll be sending you on errands I don’t trust people that don’t have your training or skill with. And you can expect me to keep you perpetually owing me at least one favour, because really, I can’t find a sniper or infiltrator like you behind every corner. Do these sound like terms you can work on?”

Widowmaker gave a curt nod, having reined her temper in a little. “They do.”

Sombra stared at her for a moment, then shook her head in disbelief. “Girl, you have a problem.”

There was that dangerous glint in Widowmaker’s eyes again. “Is there anything _else_ you wish to test my restraint with tonight?”

“No, actually, I think I might call it a day. Don’t know about you, but I hadn’t slept since we came here,” Sombra admitted. “I’ll set an alarm for half an hour before we land, yeah?”

Widowmaker scoffed, and turned to walk away from her. “Do as you please.”

Sombra rolled her eyes, then laid down atop the crates, trying to make herself comfortable. She could hear Widowmaker making her way to the other end of the cabin, no doubt to sit down and stare into the same spot on the opposite bulkhead again. Suddenly, the hacker remembered something, and rolled onto her back to look at her companion again.

“Hey, araña?”

The assassin snarled under her breath. “What is it this time?”

“How’s your arm?”

After a moment, Widowmaker turned over her shoulder, more confused than angry this time. “What?”

“You got injured on the mission before the last one, right?” Sombra reminded, her own patience at its limit. “How is that going, anyway?”

Widowmaker’s lips curled subtly in a grimace. “That’s no concern of yours.”

“Except that it literally is, ‘cause I want you in top shape for whenever I make you pay for being here,” the hacker sniped back.

“It’s manageable, and did not hinder me—not on the previous mission, not through the past two days,” Widowmaker’s voice was colder than a glacier. “And that should tell you all you need to know.”

“Dios. _Fine._ I’m going to sleep.” Sombra turned to her side, with her back to Widowmaker, and threw her jacket over her head.

She could hear Widowmaker give one last quiet snarl in the back of her throat as she exhaled, then only the tiny squeak of her stupid fucking catsuit as she sat down. Shortly after, the plane’s turbines rumbled to life, the deck moved under them, and Sombra suffered her way through takeoff before letting herself relax a little and look over the situation again.

Terrifying or not, this was the first stronger reaction she had ever gotten out of the assassin.

It was an open secret that Widowmaker was very close to Reaper, and that whatever tied them together was fiercely mutual. And beyond that, Widowmaker was an enigma. Nobody knew why she obeyed, or why she refused to obey, or what she had seen in Tracer to keep trying to see her, or why she pursued some members of Overwatch more viciously than others whenever their paths crossed—nobody but Reaper, anyway, and Reaper would never tell a soul.

Sombra wanted to know what made the assassin tick. And instead of being deterred by how hard that had been shaping up to be, she was only more excited by it. She hadn’t forgotten that her insatiable curiosity had almost gotten her tracked down before, and who knew what would become of her then. But the slip-up had not made her any less curious.

In fact, it may have made her _more_ curious.

And really, could she look at herself in the mirror if she allowed a mystery like Widowmaker walk around completely unchallenged?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 13-01-2018 update: sorry guys, no chapter this week -- I hurt my wrist at work. :(
> 
> 23-01-2018 update: work is murder. I'll do my best to churn out the update before the end of January and return to a regular schedule, though.
> 
> 12-02-2018 update: work is still profoundly kicking my ass, but this fic is not abandoned.
> 
> 26-02-2018 update: still not abandoned. I'm working on it, I promise.
> 
> 18-03-2018 update: chapter seven is halfway done.
> 
> 05-04-2018 update: *Widowmaker voice* just a little... bit... further...


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, y'all.
> 
> THIS CHAPTER.
> 
> This chapter has kicked my ass in ways only as many as they were profound. While I was writing it, I have managed to file my taxes for last year, decide on a few plans for the coming months, find a room to live in for a friend, learn that I have to retract my claim of hating wine more than I hate Junkrat, buy a really dapper plaid flannel, retry the whole thing with painting my nails, read far too much for it to be considered trying hard, and generally just live my fucking life.
> 
> This chapter is longer than the standalone that started my foray into Overfic in the first place, and over twice as long as the previously longest chapter of this installation.
> 
> I bring to you ten thousand seven hundred words. I bring to you the labour of love, and hatred, and frustration, and some more love.
> 
> God, I need a drink, but I'm on antibiotic medication, so I'm not getting any.
> 
> I hope you enjoy! There's a surprise at the end too! Please tell me if you liked the bonus and the chapter!

**_Day 7, Week 1, Month 1_ **

 

Gabriel had not been there to greet her, once Widowmaker reported back.

She was not called in for a debriefing, so he must have taken care of that. She was even awarded a few days of calm, for a mission gone successfully and smoothly. And that would, perhaps, be for the best—although she wouldn’t admit it unless truly hard-pressed, her arm still hurt. A pounding, yet dull ache, easy enough to be shoved out of her mind’s focus, but not exactly possible to ignore. It wasn’t much of a distraction, but it had proven irritating, and so was the slowly intensifying itch around the stitches.

Widowmaker brushed a hand over her injured arm, trying to relieve the irksome sensation and focus again. Gabriel and her had stuck by each other far too long for this to be happening—if he was not there when she reported back, then it was physically impossible for him to be there.

He was not deployed, the logs yielded that much to her.

He had never taken to physical exercise as a means to pass the time like she had; and although they would meet each other in the practice range on occasion, he never lost track of time there quite like she could, so it would be pointless to look for him there.

Apparently, Doomfist had blocked out an entire gym segment for himself—meaning there was no council meeting happening, and so Gabriel couldn’t have been tied up in that.

It was most likely, then, that he was in his quarters. But he would have come out to see her.

Unless.

Yes, there was one more possibility to account for this, and Widowmaker lengthened her pace, heading directly towards the section of quarters that was assigned to Talon officers.

Typically, the only ones who had the passcode to an officer’s quarters were the officer in question, an appropriately high-ranked Internal Affairs agent, and optionally a council member responsible for the officer's division. Widowmaker had received many a sidelong glance simply for walking into this section of the base—after all, she was a specialist, not an officer, and who would want one of the deadliest assassins in the world wandering near their sleeping quarters?—and many a raised eyebrow for tapping in the security code that opened the door to Reaper's room.

She paid it no mind. If they assumed that she and Gabriel were involved, they couldn't assume that neither she nor Gabriel were willing, or perhaps even able, to engage themselves in something of the sort. And they couldn't begin to guess that what held her and Gabriel together was far stronger than something of the sort.

And if they hadn't wanted her to inspire fear, they should have trained her differently.

Bringing her palm against the keypad to make it harder for the corridor's surveillance cameras to track her motions, Widowmaker entered the eight-digit passcode with quick strokes of all five fingers, and once the tiny LED light next to it changed from red to green, she attempted courtesy by knocking before she opened the door and walked in.

The large room—a little over three times larger than the one assigned to her—seemed empty. There was no one in the armchair set into a corner of the room, no one beside the tidy kitchenette along the wall on the right, no one at the table with a sewing machine covered by a sheet of waxed cloth against dust, no one digging through the boxes on the shelves next to that table, and—judging from the unlit lamp—no one beyond the door that led to the shower.

But there was a roiling plume of smoke pooled over the rug a few steps away from the untouched bed.

Widowmaker slammed the door shut behind herself without looking, then crossed the distance in a few quick, leaping strides and dropped to her knees beside the thick black mist.

“Gabriel. It’s me. Gabriel, can you hear me?”

There was a reverberating groan, and Widowmaker extended her right hand, letting her fingertips brush against the smoke.

“Reach out to me, Gabriel.”

She marvelled, sometimes, at her inability to feel the cold anymore. The failed assassination of Ekaterina Volskaya had been one of the missions that took place the previous winter—and she remembered enough of her past self’s history classes to name, off the top of her head, three failed attempts to conquer Russia that have been thwarted simply by the winter. She had only noticed the snowflakes because of the need to periodically shake them off her recon visor’s lenses. She had only noticed the frost because of the opalescent halo around her field of vision as the vapour from her breath began to crystallize on her eyelashes.

The only times she could ever feel a greater cold against that of her skin, now, were when she was touching Reaper’s shadow form.

And in response to her voice, that shadow churned, rippled, surged, and a gauntleted arm coalesced out of it to seize her forearm in a vice grip, metal claws digging into the lines etched in her skin. Widowmaker kept herself from wincing, returning the deathly desperate grip on Reaper’s vambrace instead, and brought her free hand against the black straps crisscrossing his bicep as the smoke continued to solidify.

“That’s it,” she told him calmly. “Press on. You’re _here_ , Gabriel. And I am right beside you.”

Slowly, gradually, the line of Reaper’s shoulders and the shadow of his hood seemed to take form. Widowmaker brushed her free hand over them, the chill biting into her skin enough to make her fingers grow numb and stiff; Reaper gave a small grunt of concentration, and the thicker shadow started to solidify under her touch.

They kept at it, like they have done too many times before, Widowmaker giving Reaper something to anchor onto and push back against, and Reaper working with what she was giving as best he could. And throughout, Widowmaker kept murmuring affirmations and calling Reaper’s name, and kept the cadence of her voice carefully unchanging, monotone, stable.

She only allowed for a moment of silence after Reaper had clawed his way to a fully solidified form, a sigh of relief still tinged with pain escaping from under his mask. Widowmaker leaned down, trying to check if he was awake; there was a muted red glow behind the mask’s eye sockets, yes, but that hadn’t really indicated anything on whether Reaper’s eyes were open.

“Gabriel?”

Reaper gave a small, exhausted hum at that, the sound reverberating slightly deeper than usual—as if it was echoing inside of his vest and coat, as if there was nothing solid inside of the armour and clothes, as if they were functioning a little like the glass of a crystal ball: merely to give form to the smoke inside and making sure none of it would escape.

But at the very least, the sound had been more than half-conscious, so he had quite clearly heard her.

“Soft, or weighed?” Widowmaker asked patiently.

“Soft,” Reaper groaned, the single word soaked through with suffering.

Widowmaker withdrew her arms, slowly, letting him brace himself for the loss of contact first. Then she rose to walk up to a small closet, almost entirely empty, and reached to a shelf taken by two carefully folded blankets; she pulled out the one made of fluffy, thick fleece and draped it over Reaper’s still form. Firmly, but not ungently, she took his hip and shoulder, and pulled to roll him onto his side for a moment so that she could get the blanket underneath him as well, to wrap it around him more fully. Then, she rose once more, dimmed the light from overhead fixtures, and made her way to an end table in the corner, a wooden chest atop it, a dustpan and brush under it. Widowmaker opened the chest to take out one of a few long paper boxes, a flat incense burner, and a gas lighter. She pulled a single incense stick from the box, inserted it into the burner and set it on the table, clicked the lighter a few times before succeeding at striking a steady flame, then held it against the incense’s tip for a moment, flicked it off, and waited until she was certain an ember had formed before delicately blowing the flame out. She placed the box and the lighter inside the chest again and returned to Reaper’s side, pushed a small pillow under the side of his head, and placed her hand back in the palm of his gauntlet. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Reaper dragged his other gauntlet over the floor, and placed it atop Widowmaker’s hand.

They sat in silence for a very long time, the only sound passing between them being that of their breathing, two rhythms distinctly different in how unhealthy they both were, the crisp scent of cedar incense slowly filling the room.

Eventually, Reaper let go of Widowmaker’s hand and pushed himself up into a sit, back braced against the bedframe. He still made no effort to shrug the blanket off, she noticed. If anything, he seemed to try to keep it tightly wrapped around himself.

“So, what’s your impression after an unsupervised trip alone with Sombra?”

Widowmaker made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “She’s irritating. She pushes her pity on me, keeps pressing for insignificant details even after I make it clear I have no interest in any semblance of a conversation, and she talks _decidedly_ too much.”

“She’s trying to be friends with you,” Reaper told her. “What do you think about that?”

“That I don’t need her friendship,” Widowmaker replied dryly. “All I want of Sombra is for her presence and cooperation to be bearable.”

Reaper gave a chuckle, the sound somewhere between amused and approving. “And if she starts causing more trouble than she’s worth?”

Widowmaker mimicked firing a pistol with one hand.

“Doomfist may not be too happy about that,” Reaper pointed out.

“Doomfist will be the first to cut her off if she becomes a liability,” Widowmaker shot back easily. “And he made it quite clear before that he values initiative very highly.”

“That’s true.” Reaper paused, waiting to see if Widowmaker would say anything else unprompted.

She seemed to bite on the inside of her lip, considering what to say next, or perhaps whether to say it at all—but in the end, she did speak again.

“Gabriel?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you be able to come up to the roof with me again?” Widowmaker’s eyes flicked to the blanket still draped around Reaper’s shoulderguards, over his high boots. “Later today—but, before sunset?”

After considering for a moment, Reaper gave her a nod. “Afternoon should be okay. I’ll meet you there.”

“In nine hours, then? Ten?”

“Ten should do fine.”

Widowmaker acknowledged that with a nod of her own, and they sat in silence for a moment longer before she raised a hand to her face, rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of two fingers.

Reaper tilted his head to the side. “The smell’s too intense for you?”

To her credit, she almost didn’t wince at being caught. “A little.”

“You know you can go if you like. You don’t have to stay.”

That earned him a searching look. “Are you certain you won’t need anything of me?”

“Well, you can help me up as a parting gift.”

Widowmaker pushed herself to her feet in a single smooth motion, and reached out to him without a word. Again, Reaper’s clawed gauntlet found home in Widowmaker’s smaller, long-fingered hand, and she braced her legs more firmly to pull him up—but even when he managed to stand on his own, having regained balance after a little stumble, he still wasn’t releasing her hand, staring down at it instead. She followed his gaze, and realized thin rivulets of blood were painted over her forearm—some already dried out, some still wet—where the steel claws of Reaper’s gauntlet had broken three of her stitches.

“You could have _said_ something,” Reaper growled, the anger in his voice clearly directed at himself.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Widowmaker responded candidly. Her hand was released easily when she pulled it back. “It is not a serious wound, not by any means. Pay it no mind.”

~*~

_She’s looking healthier,_ was Emily’s first thought upon seeing Lena—still kept asleep in the Watchpoint’s hospital bed.

The stitches around her eyes and over her cheeks were gone, the only sign that she had been injured there a smattering of small, slightly raised, still pink scars that would fade to whitish with time. The oxygen mask had been removed from her face as well, and the chronal accelerator was secured to her chest a little more firmly despite bandages crisscrossing her collarbones under it.

Both of her legs and her left arm, up to and including the shoulder, were still immobilized in a splint each, and she seemed to have lost some weight over the week. But that had to be expected if all nourishment she received was what dripped into her veins through an access needle.

“She’s breathing on her own just fine, now,” Angela spoke up softly, from where she waited at the door. “Her nanotherapy is complete enough to wake her up without causing her excruciating pain, or risking that she will reopen something by moving too suddenly. I’ve started to bring her out—this is a slow process, and I wanted to do it gently, so we should give her around thirty more hours.”

Emily nodded, eyes still on her sleeping girlfriend’s face. “Tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow,” Angela promised.

“Okay.” Emily took a moment before letting go of Lena’s limp hand, then cupped her face, leaned down to kiss over her eyes, her cheekbones, her forehead. “You’ll see me soon, love,” she whispered into Lena’s hair, placed one final kiss over the top of her head, then slowly drew away and rose from the edge of her bed.

One of Angela’s arms was lightly placed around Emily’s shoulders in an inviting gesture, and Emily gratefully sank into the offered hug, a little of the stress piling up upon her shoulders for the past week crumbling off when she buried her face upon Angela’s collarbone.

She smelled like antiseptics and cheap soap and the old wool sweater that she wore under her labcoat. Her embrace was far stronger than her build would suggest—steady, grounding, safe—and Emily allowed herself to close her eyes for a moment, to soak up the support that she so desperately needed, and that was so readily offered.

“All that you’ve done for Lena and me... I can’t thank you enough, Angie,” she murmured into the surgeon’s shoulder.

“You can thank me _after_ everything goes well,” Angela reminded gently. She rubbed a hand between Emily’s shoulder blades, and waited for her to pull away, held her at arm’s length for a moment longer to get a good look at her. “For now, you should at least try to eat something—how does breakfast sound?”

Emily looked away. “Like I can’t promise you anything.”

“Fareeha makes oatmeal with apple slices and raisins on some mornings,” Angela suggested, steering Emily out of the room with as much consideration as well-practiced ease, then leading her down the corridor. “It’s a good breakfast for more reasons than just the taste—among those reasons is the fact that it keeps you going for hours before you’re hungry again. And there’s always the option of pouring maple syrup into your serving.”

“Right. Half-Canadian.” Emily shook her head a little. “You know, I find myself thinking of her as Egyptian—and if I don’t purposefully remind myself that she’s of mixed descent, I almost forget about it.”

“Half-First Nations Canadian,” Angela corrected, though not unkindly, then gave a soft cough. “Yes, well... she doesn’t expose _that_ tattoo nearly as often as the one on her face.”

That finally succeeded in drawing a snicker from Emily, just as they made it into the Watchpoint’s kitchen—empty as yet save for Fareeha, chopping several peeled and cored apples with speed that spoke of long practice, a cooking pot big enough to feed an army on the stove to her left, two electric tea kettles singing on the counter to her right. She turned at the sound of the automated Watchpoint door opening, and greeted them both with a smile.

Angela shook her head. “I was just telling Emily about your oatmeal. Are you clairvoyant?”

“I told you that I’m on cooking duty today,” Fareeha reminded. “Theoretically, Hana is too, but it’s fairer to expect her to help out with dinner and handle supper alone than to wait with breakfast until she gets up.”

Emily looked between them. “She didn’t strike me as the type to sleep in.”

“She isn’t, not exactly—more of the type to work late.” The corners of Angela’s lips quirked up in a smile. “And I’m really not qualified to be telling anyone to pick more reasonable working hours.”

“Your entire life constitutes of working hours,” her wife reminded dryly, washing a handful of raisins under a stream of warm tap water before throwing them into the pot.

“Yes, thank you, Schatzi, that is precisely why.” Angela looked to one of the tea kettles as it clicked off, signalling the water was boiled, then turned to Emily. “I don’t think anyone is going to object if you use Lena’s mug. How do you take your tea?”

The redhead smiled weakly. “Well, what kinds do you have?”

Fareeha groaned. “Why are the English like this?”

“Irish, actually. Though I have lived in London for a long while now, and it’s possible I’ve picked up a few exceedingly British habits,” Emily admitted absent-mindedly as she examined the mug Angela had just handed her. Larger than any other in the cupboard, save for a tall metal stein, and with Lena’s usual taste taken into consideration its design was almost Spartan—a simple white KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON in a rectangular frame of the same colour against a solid black background.

Appropriate advice, Emily supposed.

Not like there was anything else she could do, really.

She settled for an orange pekoe while Angela had made herself a cappuccino, and stared in as much disbelief as amusement when Fareeha had poured herself a half-mug of boiling hot water, dropped several ice cubes into it, waited for them to melt, and drizzled maple syrup into the mug. To each her own, Emily concluded, watching the married two tease each other about their morning drinks of choice while Angela thoroughly washed her hands, the banter so immediate and familiar that there was no doubt they were doing it on most mornings.

It did not last long, though, with Fareeha turning to the stove again and Angela walking with Emily over to the cupboards and a drawer full of cutlery—forks, spoons, teaspoons, and knives separated cleanly, and another compartment full of identical pairs of chopsticks.

“How many people do we need to set the table for?”

Angela paused for a moment before shaking her head. “Just the three of us. Generally speaking, only very small groups of us eat together. I expect Hana and Winston to wake up soon, but Winston hardly ever joins us for a meal; Satya and Brigitte are likely still on the roof; Reinhardt had eaten already, I think.”

“Oh.” Emily tried not to look disappointed as she was handed three identical ceramic bowls and three spoons. Judging from Angela’s expression, she didn’t exactly succeed. “I’m sorry, it’s just that when Lena was talking about you all as her teammates, she made it sound like you were almost family.”

“A very wide and constantly quarrelling family, if it could have been called one at all,” Angela admitted quietly, a shadow passing through her face, “is how you could easily describe the first Overwatch. This one... the bonds are both tighter and fewer, these days, and affection is far from the only, or even the most common, part of what ties us together. Although it doesn’t surprise me that Lena would speak of us in such a way. She’s perhaps the only one that we all consider a good friend—or at the very least, the only one that we are all fond of.”

Emily gave her a searching look, and after a moment of scrutiny Angela gave up, looking away with a sigh.

“You must understand that Overwatch gave me virtually everyone I now call family. Brigitte’s mother is the only living person to whom I’m related by blood, a distant cousin of my own mother. My wife was communally raised by the original strike team, with the other members’ children and the younger members almost like siblings to her—Genji, Jesse, Brigitte herself. My best and closest friend, with whom I had lived for most of my university years, had married a high-ranking Blackwatch officer. The omnic uprising in London was the first time I had worked with Lena directly, and she’s been a dear friend to me ever since, as well. Not an insignificant amount of who I was then, and who I have become now, is thanks to them all. And it is not, was never, and never will be my intention to sound ungrateful for that.”

“But?” Emily prompted after a while, when the surgeon paused for much longer than she needed to sip her coffee.

“But,” Angela said slowly, each word carefully considered before it was uttered, “it had also brought ruin to almost all it had given me—and the collateral damage, to myself and to those I consider my own and to countless bystanders as well, was not by any means insignificant. And I am not certain, far from certain indeed, if whatever good Overwatch brought into the world had been worth all the evil it had spawned.”

“Overwatch had brought Lena back,” Emily pointed out.

“Overwatch had been responsible for Lena’s disappearance in the first place,” Angela countered easily, “and left her with a medical condition unique to her, that is to say, one with no precedent to draw upon when designing treatment and maintaining her presence among us, a condition that requires her to wear a medical device every minute of every day under pain of death or worse, a condition that she will have to live with for the rest of her days. Overwatch had raised the woman I love, and Overwatch had scarred her and failed her and shaped her life to be unfulfilling and disappointing and painful for the majority of her years, to date. Overwatch had given my best friend a husband she loved more than she had ever loved anything in the world...” she paused for a moment, swallowed, her expression suddenly drawn with old, old pain and shame and grief. “And Overwatch had turned its back on her when she had begged our help.”

Emily frowned a little, taken aback with that particular choice of words. “You make it sound like you had turned your back on that friend of yours as well.”

“Yes,” Angela said calmly, eyes still downcast and fingers tightening around her mug of cappuccino. “Overwatch had made me believe, for a time, that its goals and procedures were more important than justice and moral integrity. And before I realized how profoundly Overwatch made me betray myself and what I thought I had stood for—how easily it had led me into that betrayal by the hand, and how willingly and blindly I followed—it was already far too late for her.”

Emily shook her head a little. “Forgive me for saying so, Angie, but refusing to help anyone, much less a person you loved, doesn’t sound like something you would ever do.”

“As I said. Betrayal of the self.” Angela attempted a smile, and the result was just a touch pathetic and just a touch heartbreaking. “When I realized it, I left. Not because it would fix anything—it wouldn’t, and it didn’t, and nothing ever will. Just so I would be able to look at myself in the mirror. Just so I could really act on what I believe in. Without their resources, it was harder, and perhaps brought a lesser effect than it could have if I had stayed, but it came with a much more acceptable and affordable cost. Less lives ruined, you see, once no one was constantly devising plans to turn my technology—technology that would only ever be used to help, never to harm, that had been the condition on which I had joined Overwatch in the first place—into grenades and rifles and ammunition that isn’t outlawed only because it is not widespread enough for the makers of international law to take notice.”

Emily stared at her for a moment. On one hand, Angela was not a person prone to exaggeration, not when recounting a tale and not ever. On the other, hearing her condemn herself and other people acclaimed worldwide as heroes, if fallen from grace, was a contrast more than a little jarring.

“Is it really so bad?”

“Its use results in wounds more gruesome than those caused by dum-dum bullets,” Angela said matter-of-factly, but with a smoulder of anger in her eyes. “And the first treatise banning the use of expanding ammunition was the Declaration of St. Petersburg, which dates back to year 1868. Nineteenth century, Emily. The use of expanding ammunition in _any armed conflict_ has long been considered a war crime. And with the base in _my_ research, _my_ technology, ammunition even more horrifying than that has been created. This is what Overwatch had done with my work. This is what people who had considered themselves my family, people who had claimed to love me as their own, had done with my work. I had been lied to. Repeatedly and on many fronts. So eventually, when the scales had _finally_ fallen from my eyes, and I assure you that it took a lot more time than would be strictly necessary had I been more cautious, I left. And I had never regretted that, and I had never looked back.”

“Then,” Emily asked quietly, “why did you answer the recall?”

“Because it was Winston who called.” Angela met Emily’s eyes for the first time since they sat together. “Not the Strike Commander who had lied to me. Not the Chief Engineer who had abused my trust. Not the executive officer who gave promises to my face, and defied them as soon as I turned my back. Not the black ops leader whose decisions were as questionable and shady as they were hushed up and defended by his only superior. It was Winston. And Winston only had ever done the very same thing that I had set out to do with my life: bring new ways of aid and protection into the world. Winston engineers barrier fields, and had built Lena’s accelerator. I engineer nanotherapy, and make sure that people who champion a good cause aren’t cut down before they can make any lasting impact on the world. I answered the recall, because I was needed.”

“So it’s not that you believed in Overwatch, this new one, that it could be something better than its predecessor,” Emily concluded quietly. “It’s more of that you didn’t know what else to do.”

“This Overwatch is already better than its predecessor. Not like the bar is high, of course,” Angela flashed a sour, biting smile. “I have a theory that, to a certain degree, a scarcity of resources results in higher moral standards than abundance ever could. I have yet to be proven wrong.”

Emily smiled back, but with decidedly less bitterness and more warmth. “We may be struggling to get by, but by the Lord, we will not inflict the same struggle on anyone else, hm?”

“Quite so.”

“You know, speaking from my own experience—which I’m sure is far less extensive than your own—I really can’t argue.”

“Oh?” Angela sat more comfortably and rested her chin on a hand, eyes bright with interest. “Care to shed a light on these experiences?”

“I’m sure you would find my life stories quite boring,” Emily demurred with a laugh.

“No, please,” Fareeha spoke up, tossing a thick pot stand of woven plant fibre onto the table, then bringing the oatmeal over. “We could use a story to talk of over breakfast—if you don’t mind me listening in, of course.”

“It’s not that I mind, really, it’s more of...” Emily paused for a moment, gave a small shrug. “I don’t really see what you would find interesting in tales like these, compared to what your own lives have been like.”

“They are a good reminder to ourselves why we have chosen the paths we’re on, and remained on them,” Angela told her softly.

“And also a good reminder that, no matter our choices and efforts and accomplishments and shortcomings, it is not in our power to fix everything—and there is no shame or failing in that,” Fareeha added with a meaningful glance at her wife.

Angela huffed a soft laugh, lowering her head, a chastised blush rising on her cheeks. “And that, yes.”

“If you say so...” Emily considered, even as Fareeha beckoned at her, and she handed her bowl over. “I’m not opposed to telling you a bit; you two _are_ my friends, and I trust you.”

“Don’t feel pressured into sharing what you would rather not,” Fareeha offered, pouring a ladleful of oatmeal into Emily’s dish. “Enough, or more?”

“Enough, thank you; I’m not exactly hungry.” Emily took her bowl back, and gathered her thoughts while Fareeha poured the oatmeal for her wife, then for herself. She was about to speak when she noticed Angela bowing her head over the breakfast and closing her eyes, her bearing solemn.

“Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, Melekh ha'olam, bo're minei m'zonot.”

Fareeha’s eyes softened with a loving tenderness, and when Angela lifted the first spoonful to her lips, she turned her head to face their guest and gave a little encouraging nod.

Emily stirred her oatmeal a little. “Well, I grew up in a foster home. We were the only establishment of the sort in a rather large area, too, so you can imagine that quiet and solitude were hard to come by. The good thing about that, though, was that we were regularly given a local government grant, and sometimes a small charity fundraiser—so we made ends meet even though the only adult in the house was a single mother.”

“That seems unusual,” Fareeha noted, but without the razor-sharp edge her voice would take on when she was suspicious. “Was she a widow?”

Emily shook her head. “No, as far as I know Róisín had never married. Her only biological son, and the eldest of us all, was an unplanned child; she decided to have him and raise him, regardless. When Ciarán was around twelve, Róisín realized that... how to say it politely... not every parent who decided to have a child had made that decision because they wanted that child, or because they were qualified to raise one.” Emily’s lips curled into an ironic smile. “Her tendencies to disagree with what her surroundings called proper conduct resulted in her building a home for quite a lot of children who would otherwise grow up marinating in pathology and abuse. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, and maybe we were never what you could call wealthy, but we were always tight. An actual family—if one with a distinct lack of adults, and with no one looking alike.”

“That must have meant more responsibility for the older of your siblings,” Angela pointed out, while Fareeha nodded.

Emily laughed a little. “That’s very true. Ciarán had a part-time job after class for almost the entirety of his high school years, then transitioned to full-time right after graduating to bring a little more money home. I pitched in with working on weekends, so that at least two out of three eldest household members would be always at home to handle housework and help the younger ones with homework. It’s not like we were ever making a fortune, but even a few extra Euros were better than nothing. There’s only so many times a pair of jeans can be handed down.”

“You’d find common ground with Brigitte,” Fareeha commented with a smile, and continued at Emily’s inquiring look. “Torbjörn and Ingrid Lindholm used to run a foster home for kids orphaned in the Omnic Crisis. Brigitte is the youngest of their three biological children, but still older than all of her adopted siblings.”

Angela nodded, confirming. “It was a little too much for me, when I was young—too crowded, too loud and chaotic to even try and properly learn Swedish—so I was allowed to choose boarding schools and drop by their home for some holidays. If I hadn’t found any excuse to stay at school, of course.”

“Which was often,” Fareeha supplied.

“Which was indeed often,” Angela admitted with a self-deprecating little laugh. “But I was always welcome in their home, Brigitte still treats me like a sister, and Ingrid remains the only person I can regularly speak with in Hebrew.”

“I’m still learning,” Fareeha muttered, her expression just short of a pout.

“I know, Schatzi.” Angela leaned over to kiss her wife on the cheek, her eyes warm. “I know, and it means a lot.”

“Gaying it up ever since morning, god damn,” rang out from the door, and the three at the table turned to see Hana Song, breaking into a wide yawn as soon as she finished speaking. She was barefoot and wearing a striped blanket wrapped around her like a toga, one hand keeping the bunched up fabric at her chest and the other at her face as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Never turn it down lower than eleven and a half, you two.”

“I am ever so glad you approve of my marriage,” Fareeha said dryly as Angela snickered. “Food’s ready.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that.” Hana made an effort to stifle another yawn, and to at least appear awake before she looked at Fareeha. “If you help with dinner prep and I handle the rest plus supper, will you call it even?”

Fareeha nodded around her mouthful of oatmeal and pushed a free chair with her foot, turning it towards Hana, then gestured at it in a clear invitation.

The mecha pilot smiled, adjusting her blanket a little. “Thanks, ‘Reeha. Let me just grab a plate and I’m with you.”

When she walked over to the cupboards, Angela looked to Emily and slightly tilted her head to the side, a silent question in her eyes. Emily gave her a smile in return, as grateful as it was confirming, and a little nod—although it was true that she barely knew the Korean officer, what she had heard from Fareeha and seen for herself had painted the picture of a trustworthy and responsible young woman, one Emily would not mind being friends with.

“How many of you were there, at home?” Angela asked as Hana joined them at the table.

Emily paused for a moment, then started counting out on her fingers. “Ciarán, myself, Ruadhán, Caítlin, Liam, Ríona, Sláine, Nóra, Artúr, and Irial—those of us were the solid crew, but there were a few who only spent a few years or months with us. Like Eóin. His father was an alcoholic, but after Eóin was taken away from him, he went to therapy and straightened out so he could regain custody of his son, and made it out for good. Or Maeve. Both of her parents died in a traffic accident, but she was only with us for two years until her older sister turned eighteen and became her legal guardian—and she visited every day, like clockwork, so in a sense she was one of us anyway.”

“Foster home?” Hana guessed. At Emily’s nod, she lowered her head a little. “Yeah, the most similar experience I can boast is that my entire city ran temporary housing for people further to the south, more than once.”

Emily considered for a moment. “I suppose the start of living with a refugee near your own age or younger would be similar. Except that you wouldn’t necessarily be, well, replacing their parents.”

“Were none of those you call a ‘solid crew’ at least visited by your... let’s say, blood kin, to differentiate from family?” Fareeha asked carefully, a frown half confusion and half anger on their behalf marring her brow.

“ _Well_. That is a very important distinction you’ve made here.” Emily cleared her throat. “Ríona was with us, because her parents had wanted a son. Except that Irial is her biological brother. And once he was with us as well, you wouldn’t believe how much calmer she became. Liam and Artúr came from their home together, but bear in mind that Artúr is rather severely disabled—unless you think it’s normal for a ten-year-old to speak none—and Liam engaged their parents every time physical violence broke out, if only to take the beatings for them both. Nóra and Sláine are biological siblings as well, and though their mother showed up sometimes, Sláine only ever responded to her with monosyllables, and Nóra refused to speak with her at all. I’ve overheard Caítlin speak with her father on the phone more than once, and I held her when she cried after every single one of these conversations. Ruadhán... well, suffice to say that he decided on a rule that he will correct people on the same thing for a maximum of three times before he cuts these people off, and his parents kept persistently using his deadname, so.” The redhead gave a little shrug. “He figured out the distinction between blood kin and family along with figuring out his own gender identity, and he never looked back at his prior understanding of either of these concepts.”

Hana smiled. “Trans brother?”

“One trans brother, one non-binary sibling.” Emily smiled back, a little proudly. “Ruadhán, Sláine and I had always stuck together that much more tightly. We’ve done some truly crazy shite, and convinced at least half of our school by personal example that you don’t necessarily have to be cisgender and heterosexual to be a good person.” Her smile took on a sly quality. “Pretty sure we’ve also helped some of our schoolmates realize that they weren’t, in fact, as cisgender and heterosexual as previously assumed.”

Hana burst into delighted laughter at that.

“What was the craziest thing of the sort you’ve ever done?” Fareeha challenged.

Emily groaned at the very memory. “So you see, Ruadhán was sick— _really_ sick, barely able to move between his bed and the toilet on his own—and he had just ran out of his hormones. Allegedly, he had hoped to get well before scraping the bottom of the barrel, refuel his motorcycle, which I could not drive at that point in time, and make a trip to the hospital that secured his prescription. Róisín, our foster mother, was out supervising the younger kids for some kind of a workshop. Ciarán, our eldest brother, was at work. Ríona and I were the only ones home with him— Ríona still walking on crutches after she had broken her leg, and I was getting ready for work myself when Ruadhán finally told me he was out.” She cleared her throat. “I _may_ have lied to my supervisor to weasel out of working, then bicycled across the country, on a bike I had technically stolen, to get to that hospital. And argued enough doctors into submission to pick up Ruadhán’s prescription. And then bicycled back, put the bike back where I had stolen it from, and handed my absolute ledge of a brother his medication. And when I could move again, I actually baked a bloody apple pie and went over to apologize for stealing the bike.”

“Holy shit,” Fareeha choked out between laughter.

“ ** _You’ve been struck by a smooth criminal_** ,” Hana roared.

“But if you lived in a small town, wasn’t it possible for someone to notice you going on that road trip?” Angela pointed out.

Emily huffed a soft laugh. “Someone had noticed me, yes. I had to find a new job. The lecture Ciarán alone had given me...” She shook her head. “But Ruadhán is my brother. Younger, at that. And he needed that medication.”

“You are my people,” Hana declared calmly.

Emily looked up at her curiously, and with more than a little surprise. Hana, in response, raised an eyebrow and adjusted the blanket she had wrapped around herself.

The blanket consisting of horizontal stripes.

Blue, pink, white, pink, blue.

Very slowly, Emily lowered herself into a facepalm. “You’re wearing a pride flag, and I am a blind idiot.”

“You’ve had a pretty rough week, so I’ll let it slide—this once.” Hana’s wink and smile softened the bite of her words, giving them a playful ring.

Emily felt her shoulders droop a little, even as she glanced at the Korean pilot through her fingers. “Thank you. And, yes, I do believe that qualifies as a ‘rough week’, yes.”

“It must have meant an immeasurable amount of security for your siblings,” Angela spoke up again, “to know they had an older sister as devoted and decisive as you.”

Fareeha nodded along. “If nothing else, you made sure they knew there was at least one person on Earth who loved them.”

“What? No,” Emily looked up at them. “No, the parents of many of those stuck in foster care love their children very much. The problem is, they go about showing it the wrong way, or don’t do anything at all. Love, on its own, is just a warm ball of fuzz in your gut, and it’s a feeling, and it’s important, and it is _absolutely worthless_ unless you put it into practice. It’s still there if you don’t, certainly—it simply can’t be a basis for demanding, well, anything really, including the right to be loved back.”

“Because you hold these beliefs,” Angela said softly, “because you acted on your love, Lena is still with us.”

Emily looked down into her bowl of oatmeal, still half-full. A rifle pointed in her face. Golden eyes, mocking, ruthless, shocked, frightened. Thick red blood welling between cobblestones. Blue light, always so steady, now flickering and sputtering. “What I did was the only thing I could have done and remained able to live with myself.”

~*~

Holding himself together after a bad episode like this was always a concentrated effort, but over time, Reaper had worked out a list of things that helped. The touch of something comforting, wrapped around himself. A few certain scents. Cookies he had memorized the recipe for, and that kept for weeks in an airtight container, once he could slide his mask up onto his forehead to slip a few into his mouth. And a task to keep himself occupied, once having a tangible form was endurable again, if barely—a task familiar enough to distract himself from the reflexive now habit of backing away from the physical in an effort as desperate as it was futile to ease the constant pain when it flared up to unmanageable levels.

It hadn’t been undemanding, at first, to hold knitting needles in steel-clawed gauntlets, but it had gotten easier with practice. And there was no shortage of opportunities for practice, for distracting himself from the pain and waiting it out until it slinked back into whatever hole it had crawled out of—and when the allotted ten hours had come and gone, he put the yarn to rest and headed for the roof access stairs.

There was an elevated section of the roof, inaccessible from the hatch that crested the stairwell, yet still well below the radar dish and sensor spires. That very section bore numerous small marks from Widowmaker’s grappling hook, where she had used it to pull herself up and sit there, basking in the sun like a spider under its terrarium’s heat lamp.

The bone-pale mask tilted to the sky. Short of using a ladder, there was only one way for him to get up there too, and he had spent most of the day trying to keep his body from doing that exact thing.

But, hell, he had to wrench back the control of that sometime. And Widow didn’t often ask for anything. Trying for her was as good a reason as he could get to try at all.

And he did just spend the day watching the tide draw back until he was free to pick up the driftwood sticks that used to be the rafters of his sandcastle of control over his form, and building it back up all over again.

Reaper drew a deep breath, then took a short run-up and leapt up, the motion carrying him into a plume of smoke arcing upwards, upwards, until the rooftop’s edge was below him—and as soon as it was, he clenched hard on the sensations of being solid that he had spent the day mindful of, coalescing again without much trouble, only the edges of his arms, shoulders, and hood trailing blacks wisps for slightly longer than they would on an episode-free day.

Widowmaker looked up from where she was seated at rest, and gave him a nod as a hello.

“Show me your arm,” Reaper demanded instead of returning the greeting.

That earned him an exasperated look, but also compliance; she uncrossed her arms from over her chest, and lifted the right to present the broken stitches having dried out and scabbed over.

“I told you to pay it no mind, Gabriel.”

“Maybe I would,” Reaper grunted as he settled himself down beside her, “if not for the fact that the quarterly physicals are going to start soon.”

Widowmaker’s entire posture sagged slightly as she gave a resigned sigh. “Of course they are.”

“So make sure this heals cleanly. And try not to get injured again before they hit.”

She seemed to mull it over for a while. “I can’t promise you that without knowing first where I will be sent out in the meantime. Do you know anything about upcoming deployments?”

“Nothing yet, no. But I know that results from the quarterlies will be used to pick out a new specialist.”

Widowmaker turned to him sharply, stiffening. “ _Already?_ It hadn’t even been a year since Fiddler finished training—or since the recruitment of Shimada.”

“Yeah, but this one is going to be an investment into dealing with one very specific thorn in Talon’s side.” Reaper met her eyes from behind his mask. “One that makes it virtually impossible to permanently deal with any other problem.”

Widowmaker’s face hardened. “Angela.”

“Yeah. I think the beating you gave Oxton was the final straw. Apparently she isn’t awake yet, but if that many injuries of that severity weren’t an obstacle for Ziegler to keep her breathing, it’s fucking useless to try killing any Overwatch agents before taking her out first.” Reaper paused for a moment, trying to gauge Widowmaker’s reaction. Which wasn’t the easiest thing he had ever set out to do, given that there was no reaction. “How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t feel anything about that, Gabriel,” the assassin responded dryly.

“Really? Because you look mad that it’s not going to be you who kills her.”

Widowmaker’s lips tightened into a thin line. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” Reaper echoed, his tone more than a little biting. She was his friend and he cared about her, but God, was he done with her sometimes.

“ _Perhaps_. I don’t...” Widowmaker let out a frustrated sigh, letting her eyes close. “I don’t _know_ , Gabriel. I, myself, don’t feel anything about Mercy. She’s a priority target, so she will be eliminated at any cost, and that is all there is to it. That other part of me... the one deeper inside...” she trailed off, swallowed, her hands clenching into fists for a moment before she forcibly relaxed them again.

“Yeah?” Reaper prompted when the silence dragged on.

Widowmaker gave a weak shake of her head. “I just don’t know, Gabriel. There is too much, all tangled up and squeezed together until the pieces are not distinguishable anymore—and it helps none that my understanding of that part of me is extremely limited.”

Reaper nodded at that, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She had tells, like everyone did—and although hers might have been far subtler than most people’s, he’d known her long enough, both before and after Talon had remade her, to know what they were.

Right now, she was really damn unsettled by her inability to wrap her head around what was wrong with her, and irritated by it, and afraid of what it would mean if literally anyone other than Reaper noticed.

It was more than he was used to seeing from her in a week, all at once. Usually, he’d try getting her to talk it through, to let her come to some sort of understanding by making her verbalize her thoughts. But that evidently wasn’t going to work, this time.

He’d have to settle for distraction.

“This isn’t what you called me up here to talk about, though,” he broke the silence again.

Golden eyes flicked up to his mask for a moment. “No, it is not. You had asked me, a few days ago, to let you know if there was another person I have no wish to kill—or see killed, or harmed.”

Reaper tilted his head to the side. “That’s what the trip with Sombra was for?”

Widowmaker gave a small nod. “I wanted to make sure.”

“Well?”

“It’s...” Widowmaker paused, lifted her head, looking at the sea. “Tracer is seeing someone. A girl.”

“Uh-huh?”

“That’s the one.”

Reaper cleared his throat. “You don’t usually go that far just for one person.” _Not anymore, at least._

“This is not for Tracer,” Widowmaker said evenly. “If anything, it would be the other way around.”

He weighed that for a moment, trying to make sense of her words. It looked like there was exactly none to be found, and he had known her for way too long to assume that.

“I don’t follow.”

Widowmaker gritted her teeth as she took a moment to think of a different way to explain. And in the end, she simply turned to face him.

“Look at me, Gabriel.”

He did, and stared at Talon’s hunting hound that wore his old friend’s face, once so expressive, now only barely alternating between the various shades of derision and anger, any hint of being capable of a genuine smile sheared from her face with syringe after syringe of experimental treatment, all semblance of faith or idealism snuffed out of her eyes along with her warmth, and along with the hazel, now faded into gold colder than a glacier’s heart and harder than a thunder’s crack, faded, all of her faded—a wraith not entirely unlike himself, both of them more of a harsh reminder of what they had used to be rather than standalone entities all in their own right.

“Do you see something you would like to watch happening again?” that vengeful ghost sitting next to him asked calmly, and all he could do was look away.

“No.”

“Neither do I.” Widowmaker turned to look at the sea again. “Which is why I will not allow Talon to learn about that girl, no matter the cost.”

“And that’s it? That’s the whole reason?”

The set of her jaw hardened for a moment again. “No. But it’s the only part of the reason that I’m capable of explaining right now.”

Reaper considered that, watching her profile. “How badly do you want to do this?”

Widowmaker slowly closed her eyes, weighing the question on the scales of all she could not verbalize, and stayed silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, but steady with conviction.

“It’s the only course of action I can take and remain capable of living with myself.”

Reaper gave her a thoughtful hum at that.

It had been years, insipid and miserable as only Talon could make them, since he had been forced to accept that he was never going to get a reaction stronger than a brief flicker of annoyance out of her. Years, measured by spent shotgun shells and sniper rounds shot from impossible positions, since he had given up on ever being capable of doing more for her than trying to keep her alive. Years of watching her obey, regardless of how suicidal her orders were, prioritize one mission objective after another over her well-being and survival, his only comfort being that she relied on him and bore the weight of his own dependency on her like a part of herself, like a role known by heart, and performed it as easily as she breathed, never once missing a step.

And now, something had made her slam through all of that passive, indifferent acceptance of her fate. Now, out of nowhere, she had made a decision that involved neither her duties nor himself in any way, and she was taking concrete action in accordance with that decision.

Out of nowhere, Widowmaker was doing something for no reason other that because she wanted to.

Normally, he’d be suspicious. But this time—this once—he was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. And he would roll with her thing for this civilian, all the way, no matter where it would go.

“Okay, that’s fair.”

Widowmaker’s eyes softened for a moment, a brief flicker of relief and gratitude. Reaper cleared his throat, and looked away.

“I’m assuming your new favourite lives in the UK, then?”

She pursed her lips at that choice of words, but nodded. “If any agents that you’re fond of are operating in the vicinity of King’s Row, I think it’s time for them to be moved to a different assignment. Elsewhere.”

Reaper paused for a moment. “You realize that if she’s from King’s Row, there’s a laundry list of people who are likely to cause her harm, and Talon is far from the top right now.”

“If anyone makes a move against her, I will kill them,” Widowmaker said calmly. “Talon, law enforcement, common criminals omnic or human, it matters little who.”

“It’s not possible for you to tail her all the time. You know that.” Reaper turned to watch her profile again, and waited until she confirmed with a nod. “How are you gonna go about this?”

“For one,” Widowmaker said slowly, “I think I will have to partner with Sombra on a somewhat regular basis.”

Reaper made a disapproving noise. “What’s her price for that, anyway?”

“Sending me on an assignment all for herself, one for every favour I owe her. I doubt she can come up with anything that Doomfist hadn’t already.”

On one hand, Reaper was inclined to agree with that. On the other, he hadn’t kept both of them alive for so long by taking chances whenever he was inclined to believe something that might or might not be true.

“Listen, if you ever. _Ever_. Get as much as a suspicion that she’s playing you for more than you’ve bargained for—”

“You will be the first to know,” Widowmaker assured him calmly. “And I will rely on you for aid.”

Reaper gave her a stiff nod. “You will get it.”

“I know.”

They fell silent for a moment after that, again, the sea beneath them churning under the wind beating waves against the land, patiently, endlessly, the same force that wore down cliffs on a different shore building the stony beach around the base.

“For now,” Widowmaker said quietly, “I think Talon’s intelligence will be sufficient to give me enough of a warning in advance about events that could put her in harm’s way. It will not account for... more random misadventure... but it is a starting point.”

“Dig up what you can about the civvie before you get down to business,” Reaper advised. “Where she works, what she does, who she votes for. Might give you a head start in putting pieces together when something falls apart.”

Widowmaker gave a thoughtful nod. “I will.”

“Have you thought of how to cover your tracks? You know this all comes with a very real risk of leading Talon to the one person you want to keep us from knowing about.”

She sighed. “No venom mines, no sniping—obviously. So far I’ve only needed to use weapons that were already on the scene. I will have to rely on hand-to-hand and stealth otherwise; fortunately, it’s not very difficult to move unseen in a city where no one ever looks up.”

Reaper gave a reverberating chuckle, almost like a thunder's growl. “Right. The rain.”

“Some of the roofs there get slippery.” Widowmaker’s lips curved a little in a grimace. “I really wish I could wear different shoes for combat operations, sometimes.”

“I don’t think we’ll get a request for altering your gear through the quartermasters without you, I don’t know, breaking your leg in a fall.”

She looked over to him, golden eyes perfectly inexpressive in a glare. “No thank you.”

“Maybe the quarterlies will show some considerable strain on your joints from wearing those boots, and someone will sit down for long enough to realize you need real footwear.”

“Also no, thank you.”

“Then I guess you’re stuck with what you’ve got now.”

“Such a shocking development,” Widowmaker drawled, her voice sickeningly sweet. “How will I ever adjust to usage of what I’ve been limited to since I finished training.”

Reaper snorted. It wasn’t humour, not really, not like it had used to be. It was more of a reflex, a defence mechanism, just another way of keeping each other sharp. Just making sure they still hadn’t forgotten how to do it.

But it was better than nothing.

It had to be.

~*~

Fareeha breathed out a sigh, eyes closing for a moment, feeling her limbs relax and her heart slowly return to its normal rhythm. A rustle of sheets, a shift of the weight distributed on the mattress, and she found herself looking up right into her wife’s eyes, vibrant blue and watching her with an adoring tenderness. She only realized that her lips have pulled into a sated smile when Angela smiled back at her; it was not enough to look at the most beautiful woman in the world, Fareeha decided, then reached up with her right hand to cup her cheek, to pull her down for a slow, languid kiss.

She could still taste herself on Angela’s lips and tongue, she noted.

After they broke apart, Angela smiled at her again, briefly this time, before leaning down again to press their cheeks together, and finally settled with her head over Fareeha‘s chest—where she was cradled and held close, Fareeha’s right hand carefully untying her hair and stroking it in a slow caress, her left arm firmly wrapped around Angela’s back, the steel warmed with their bodies, the added bit of weight comforting.

But there was still a fair amount of tension coiled in the set of her wife’s shoulders, and Fareeha could hear much the same in Angela’s sigh as she pressed her cheek against Fareeha’s breastbone.

“Are you still worried about tomorrow?” Fareeha asked quietly.

She felt her wife wince against her skin. “Am I that transparent?”

“I can tell you’re far away.” Fareeha shook her gently. “Come back. Stay. Talk to me about it.”

“I’m sorry,” Angela murmured, her voice chagrined. “It’s that there’s just... Things can still go so wrong. Even if there won’t be any complications with bringing Lena out, there’s not telling how long she will need to really be awake and aware. Then, keeping her from hurting her own recovery with stress of being barely able to move. Then, rehabilitation. _Then,_ coming up with a way of keeping her from active duty before she’s really ready for it again—”

“Listen to me.” Fareeha’s arms tightened a little around her wife. “You’ve invented your branch of medicine. You are incredibly thorough in everything you do, professional or private. And Lena had already demonstrated she’s capable of pulling herself out of worse non-existence than a week of being under. Repeatedly. She’s going to recover.”

Angela was silent for a very long moment before closing her eyes and speaking again, her voice barely a whisper. “And if she won’t?”

“Then she will overcome. And you will know that you’ve done everything you could have done, and more than anything that anyone else would have been able to do,” Fareeha told her calmly. “Not everything is within your power to change. There’s only so far you can shift the boundaries of what is possible by yourself.”

There was a small sigh, and a light tickle of lashes that told Fareeha her wife had closed her eyes. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It is that simple.” Fareeha scraped her fingernails through her wife’s scalp, earning a pleased murmur. “I’m not promising you that it’s going to be easy, because that would be a lie, this will not be easy on any of us—not on you, not on Lena, not on Emily, not on anyone who holds even one of you dear.”

“Not on you.” Angela stroked Fareeka’s flesh-and-blood shoulder with the back of one hand.

“I’ll live. What I _am_ promising you is that no matter how hard this is going to be, I will be right beside you throughout, and I will make every effort I can to make it easier for you.”

“I know, Schatzi.” Angela’s reached to squeeze lightly on Fareeha’s right hand, brushed a fingertip over the unadorned gold band on her index finger, matching her own. “I know, and I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Fareeha paused for a moment to swallow, the words still managing to make her throat grow tight, no matter how much more accustomed she had grown to saying them—and hearing them directed at herself, in turn.

She felt Angela place a light kiss on the underside of her chin. “Still getting choked up when I remind you of that?”

“Don’t even start,” Fareeha huffed softly, happiness clear in her tone. “As if I never have to remind you of things.”

“Oh? Things such as?”

“What is it that you always say? ‘You are not required to complete the work’?”

“But neither are you free to abandon it,” Angela murmured, a little chastised, but ready to continue good-naturedly arguing her point.

“Right, and you do not abandon.” Fareeha paused for a moment to kiss Angela’s forehead. Then her voice took on a jokingly biting tone. “At least, there was never an instance of you abandoning your job, I’m sure, not for any reason under the Sun.”

That earned her a light smack on the top of her head, and Fareeha chuckled before shifting her arms to lift Angela off of herself a little—just enough to lock eyes again.

“We will face this, and we will weather it, and we will do it together. But... that is all going to happen tomorrow. It is still tonight, and at this point of tonight, there is nothing more to be done about it, therefore, no point to worrying about it. Now, the best course of action, with tomorrow in mind, is for you to relax, and to rest.” Fareeha gently rolled them both to the side, reversing their position so that she’d wind up on top, then braced her metal arm against the mattress and put on her best bedroom eyes. Judging from the faint blush rising on her wife’s cheeks, it was working. “So let me take your mind off it.”

“Well, if that is so... komm hier,” Angela purred. She threaded a hand through her wife’s hair to pull her into a kiss, and moaned softly against her mouth when Fareeha’s right hand slipped down to her breast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> a commission from the wonderful [@wouldntyoulichentoknow](https://wouldntyoulichentoknow.tumblr.com/), the original post [here,](https://wouldntyoulichentoknow.tumblr.com/post/172625231127/sketch-commission-from-a-while-back-for) — Hana wearing her "and I am a blind idiot" blanket.


	8. Chapter 8

_**Day 1, Week 2, Month 1** _

 

In every Watchpoint, there was a room full of medical equipment stacked floor to ceiling and wall to wall, barely leaving enough room to move between the piles—a room capable of supplying the entire medical wing with everything more sophisticated that beds, wall clocks, or IV bag stands.

Mercy had no idea who had made certain to seal up these rooms, in the absence of both herself and the Strike Commander who was presumed dead at the time, when Overwatch was disbanded—and after finding them untouched in each Watchpoint that the sad little remains who called themselves the recalled Overwatch have tried to reclaim so far, she was not certain if she should curse or bless the name of that person. On one hand, this was life-saving equipment, and had enabled her to keep any injuries on their side of the conflict with Talon from being terminal. On the other hand, this was life-saving equipment that so many civilian hospitals could not afford, and would make so much use of, if the devices hadn't been locked away for years, their only use to gather dust.

She did manage to find all equipment, in one of these rooms, that she needed to keep Lena stable and breathing and sleeping and alive, after the last mission. So, Mercy conceded silently as she walked down the corridor, she should really stop wondering about what-ifs and whether the soul who had made that decision should be thanked or decried, and simply get on with maximizing the benefits of what she had been given.

On her left and half a step behind her walked Emily, still relying on Angela to lead, but having quite clearly become more familiar with the Watchpoint’s layout over the past few days. Behind them, Winston’s heavy step followed, the scientist having invited them both to go first, both out of politeness and to account for his size. Emily had come explicitly to be there when Lena was due to wake up; not having Winston there when Lena was due to wake up would be unthinkable.

You don’t just separate peanut butter and jelly, Lena would doubtlessly say, and give a heartfelt laugh at her own joke, and all Angela could do at that thought was try to hold back a smile, because not only was it immediately obvious who Lena considered to be peanut butter and who to be jelly, she could also imagine the expression on Fareeha’s face if she were within earshot of that.

She could also imagine the slightly guilty expression on Winston’s face without having to turn around and look at him. Lena had been kept asleep for a week now, and while Emily had come as soon as she was able and made arrangements to stay for as long as she was able, Winston had spent much the same period locking himself away, keeping himself occupied with mundane work, re-organizing and reviewing and archiving, and he had limited himself to asking Angela about Lena’s condition, after visiting the Brit once and for a very short time.

Emily had endured her way through watching Lena so injured, so uncharacteristically still. Winston couldn’t bear seeing his best friend like that. And Angela made a mental note to speak to him about it later, to make sure he knew no one thought less of him for that, to point out sitting by Lena’s bedside while she was kept unconscious would not, in any real way, help her recover, and to reason with him until his heart and his conscience were convinced of what his mind knew.

She would likely have to enroll Emily’s help in that, and possibly also Lena’s.

After Lena woke up.

With a deep breath, Angela steeled herself into the compassionate professionalism of her medical degree and her combat callsign, and led Winston and Emily to where Lena was recovering.

“We might be here a while, but I wouldn’t expect her to take more than a few hours, now,” Angela told the two accompanying her. _Three hours at the most,_ she thought, and said nothing, careful not to give them false hope or cause to worry if she had estimated wrong. “You two might as well get comfortable.”

“I suppose so,” Emily agreed quietly, then sat on the edge of Lena’s bed and took her girlfriend’s good hand into one of her own. “I’m glad this will be over soon.”

“Me too,” Winston offered, settling himself down on the floor on the other side of the bed.

Emily gave him a sympathetic smile before turning to Angela for a moment. “Should we wait in silence, or...?”

The medic considered, even as she pulled a chair and sat near Emily, then shook her head. “If I remember right, she had mentioned it’s easier for her if there is some mild form of sensory stimulation.” Angela looked to Winston as well, and he nodded.

“Something to anchor onto, she had called it, at... ah... more difficult times.”

Emily gave a nod at that as well, and quietly watched her girlfriend’s face for a while before turning to Winston again. “You had mentioned archiving, right?”

“Oh, um... yes, old documents and such, ones that likely no one will ever need again. They were actually archived before, but whoever was responsible for that quite clearly didn’t pay attention to what they were doing. It’s impossible to find _anything_ where the electronic indexing says it should be, and there was never a paper index. So I’ve been redoing that with an actual system in place...” Winston fumbled a moment. “But I don’t want to bore you with that.”

Emily laughed a little. “Bore? You do remember that I work in accounting? Archiving is somewhat near my area of expertise—it was my first job out of college, though I did like it less; a little too mechanical, maybe.”

“I can agree with you on that.” Winston heaved a sigh. “I tend to leave it for when I’m too tired for any more important or more demanding work.”

“Just something easy to let your brain rest without wasting time, hm?”

Winston gave Emily a grateful look. “Precisely, yes.”

Angela pinched the bridge of her nose. “I am surrounded by workaholics.”

Winston chortled, and Emily gave the medic an incredulous look. Before either of them could point out how much of the pot calling the kettle black that remark had been, though, Lena stirred in her bed, her fingers locking slowly around Emily’s hand. The redhead froze, barely daring to breathe, as did Winston; Angela rose from her chair, and stepped closer.

“Lena?”

The Brit didn’t react.

“Lena,” Angela repeated, gently patting her patient’s cheek. “Your friends are here. It’s time to wake up.”

That earned her a little groan of protest.

“Lena. We aren’t in a hurry, but you need to wake up.”

Lena shifted a bit again, as if trying to relieve her shoulders and back after staying motionless for so long, but still offered no verbal response. Angela reached over to click her fingers twice right next to Lena’s left ear; a small frown marred Lena’s brow, and she leaned slightly away from the sound. Angela clicked her fingers two more times next to her right ear, and watched Lena wince a little more sharply, then attempt to lick her lips.

“Stop that, Ang,” she mumbled finally, her voice a hoarse rasp from disuse.

“Lena, what are the colours of the Union Jack?”

“It’s, um.” Her patient considered that for a moment. “There’s blue, red, and white in there.”

“Where is our headquarters located?”

“Geeb. Gibberalt.” Lena paused to swallow and lick her lips again. “...Watchpoint G.”

“Who built your accelerator?”

“Winston did, c’mon love, keep up…”

The corners of Angela’s lips quirked up just slightly when she tried to hold back a smile, even as she glanced up at a visibly relieved Winston for a moment. “Lena, can you open your eyes for me?”

“How d’you do that, again?”

Angela placed a hand over Lena’s cheek and gently pulled one of her eyelids back with a thumb.

“Oh.” Lena stared at her for a moment with one eye before she blinked the other open as well. “Woah, hullo, love, when was the last time you slept?”

“I’m not the one we’re worried about, now,” Angela chided gently. “How are you feeling?”

Lena’s face slowly scrunched up into concentration as she considered the question and attempted to take stock. “Groggy as shite and parched to match, really. How many did you let me drink?”

There was a brief silence. Lena’s expression shifted into unease.

“...we didn’t go out for a pint, did we?”

Angela cleared her throat, averting her eyes for a moment. “Last time we did was three weeks ago, Lena.”

There was a flash of disbelief on Lena’s face, followed by confusion. “But that didn’t... Wait, we’ve– we’ve run combat ops since?”

“We did,” Angela confirmed, her voice as encouraging as she could manage.

“And,” Lena said slowly, “seeing as I woke up with you standing over me, and I don’t know where I am, that means I got injured.”

“We’re in Watchpoint: Menawethan. And yes, you had gotten injured—quite seriously, too, but you’re going to be all right.” Angela paused for a moment. “It’s okay if you can’t remember right now. The sedatives will take a while yet to wear off completely.”

“No, I– we were in the Row? I got up on the roofs, but– something threw me off—” Lena broke off, blood draining from her face and her eyes widening in a sudden bout of terror. “ _Emily._ ”

“Right here,” Emily spoke up, prompting Lena to look at her immediately and stare for a long while, still with that wild look in her eye, the silence between them ripe with a surreal fear.

“Stove,” Lena blurted out in the end.

“What?”

“ _Stove._ ” To the horror of all present, Lena tried to sit up. Dismay flashed through her face when she found that she could not, but she was promptly distracted by all three scrambling to keep her in bed, then locked eyes with her girlfriend again and looped back to her previous thought. “ _I left the stove on_ , Em.”

“Whoa, whoa, Lena, listen—” Emily placed a hand over her girlfriend’s chest, just above the accelerator’s frame, and pressed to keep her from getting up. “Lena. I had to double-back for my keys. I noticed the stove, and I turned it off.”

Lena froze, a disproportionately hopeful look on her face. “You did?”

“I did. Promise you that I did. Please lie back down?”

Lena needed a while to process that, but ultimately, her lips pulled into a lovestruck smile, and her good hand tightened a little over Emily’s own even as she allowed herself to be gently pushed onto her back again. “What would I do without you?”

Emily laughed a little, tears prickling her eyes. “Let’s not find out.”

Lena hummed her agreement to that, and Emily leaned over to cup her girl’s cheeks with both hands, to kiss her as firmly as she could manage, desperately in need for something to steady her as a seismic force of relief shattered the ground under her feet. She only pulled back when Lena had leaned away, just slightly, to breathe; Angela wrapped an arm around Emily’s shoulders, blue eyes full of relief and concern in equal measure, and yet again Emily found herself leaning against the support so readily offered, Angela’s arms firm around her, holding her steady.

Meanwhile, Lena turned her head against the pillow to look at the third guest at her bedside, the motion slow and her eyes half-closed with sleepiness again. “Win?”

“Yes?”

“I have a mission of utmost importance, love. You’re the only one I can trust with it, you are, and if this is my last day on God’s green earth I must have a confidant who will carry it out in my stead—”

“ _Yes,_ Lena?”

“Annoy Fareeha for me while I’m out, would you? Can’t have her think we don’t love her anymore.”

Winston rumbled a warm laugh, threading his large hand through Lena’s hair to tousle it up until it resembled its usual appearance. “I think there’s no real danger of that.”

_“Wiiiiiiiin.”_

Winston heaved a sigh. “I’ll make sure to annoy her with your love.”

“Brilliant. Knew I could count on you.” Lena’s eyes slipped closed, and the display of her vitals on the monitors surrounding her bed dipped slightly as she fell asleep again.

~*~

In every Talon base, there was a room that very few were authorized to enter, its walls completely soundproof, its door triple-reinforced steel, its security almost as sophisticated as the terminals protecting the conference rooms meant for the council members themselves.

Widowmaker entered her designation into the numeric keypad, and watched the first of four red LED lights flash green.

_{Designation confirmed. Enter handprint.}_

Reflexively, she wiped her right hand on her barrack uniform’s trousers before placing it against the scanner’s surface.

Two green. _{Handprint ID confirmed. Enter retinal scan.}_

She stared into the small window that unlatched in the terminal level with her eyes, and kept herself from blinking.

Three green. _{Retinal ID confirmed. Enter voiceprint.}_

“Widowmaker,” she spoke, voice as steady and accent as thick as ever.

Four green, and a deep metallic clang as the locks disengaged. _{Voiceprint ID confirmed. Verification complete. Security measures disabled.}_

The door split open down the middle. Widowmaker stepped in, ignoring the echoing boom as the entrance slammed shut right behind her. The conference table and six chairs in the depth of the room were disregarded in favour of a small screen, embedded in the wall behind the seat at the head of the table, a two-fold scoreboard on display.

    WID—4023— **AVL** —98%—90kg—2103m—12.31s—27min15s—4d09h  
          LIG—5564— **DPL** —76%—350kg—206m—20.37s—48min26s—5w6d22h  
DEA—7147— **DPL** —79%—100kg—123m—15.78s—39min41s—N/A  
    VAN—8651— **WIA** —78%—120kg—114m—17.62s—36min20s—6d16h  
    FID—10247— **AVL** —74%—170kg—436m—16.85s—40min32s—5d20h

MYα— **DPL** —74%—150kg—391m—16.10s—34min54s—7d03h  
MYβ— **DPL** —76%—150kg—403m—16.13s—36min21s—7d03h  
MYγ— **DPL** —73%—150kg—419m—15.98s—32min43s—7d03h  
MYδ— **DPL** —77%—150kg—397m—16.12s—37min02s—7d03h  
MYε— **DPL** —75%—150kg—409m—16.07s—36min27s—7d03h  
MYζ— **DPL** —76%—150kg—411m—16.09s—35min18s—7d03h

Widowmaker bit her lip. Her run-and-catch game with Tracer had been costly on her accuracy score, and she had only barely managed to get it back up to almost perfect. She still hadn’t beaten her longest range confirmed kill, which she had landed three years ago, and her speed records had been holding steady for much longer than that. Her overall results spoke of a lack of improvement. And that was a threat to her continued existence.

She had to run the next physical test in less than twenty-seven minutes, without missing a single shot throughout.

Gabriel was right; she couldn’t afford another injury before the quarterlies ended. And she would have to switch her workout routine to speed training, for the time being—not that it would help much, not over such a short period, but at least to remind her body how to perform at a hundred percent, without saving anything for when some part of the mission inevitably went wrong.

But that was still in the future, if near, and the present was more than happy to provide her with problems no less pressing than the upcoming quarterly physicals and the impending reality of having even more competition in the making very soon.

Widowmaker turned away from the scoreboard a towards the larger screen, taking up almost the entirety of the neighbouring wall. At her touch, a screensaver of the Talon symbol against a smooth black background gave way to a flat world map and a two category scroll-through list to the side. She chose the list labelled **Priority Targets** and scrolled all the way down to find the dossier she wanted not far from the bottom.

Ziegler, Angela. Callsign: Mercy. Primary combat medic of Overwatch, both before its collapse and after its recall. Nobel Prize in Medicine for pioneer work in the nanotherapy field. Nobel Peace Prize for continued humanitarian work. A short list of commendations for outstanding bravery in the field, during her time in Overwatch, and a notice of the day she had resigned her position.

All common knowledge.

Widowmaker stared at Mercy’s photo, focused, and attempted to nudge the sight towards the tightness knotted up inside her chest.

There was recognition, that much was clear. Unfortunately, that was the extent of what was clear.

Before, and in a case infinitely less complicated, only one thing had worked. And while Widowmaker doubted it would prove even half as useful now, she had no better solution at the ready, so she had no choice but to resign herself to the labour of separating the wheat and the chaff of feelings she had grown so unaccustomed to.

A deep breath to brace herself, and Widowmaker imagined Mercy brought low, wings snapped and head bowed under the weight of failure—and tasted copper as a wave of dismay and pity crashed over her, a wave that was carried on a very strong undercurrent of vicious satisfaction. She shook her head and took another deep breath, withdrawing from the emotion and the thought, then imagined Mercy at peace, receiving recognition and reaping the rewards of long years and decades of sustained, continued, hard work—and the response from deep inside her was a glimmer of contentment, a smidge of pride, and a rumbling roar of wrathful hatred.

Widowmaker frowned, and sat down on the edge of the briefing room’s table. This was going to take a while.

_The sympathy, the fondness, why are these here?_

There was something– something had surfaced, yes, but no matter how she tried to reach for it, she felt like she was walking into a wall.

Widowmaker braced her hands against the table, and leaned back a little to stare at the ceiling. It didn’t take her long to remember that last time, when a memory had surfaced, she had refused it and hammered it down—a fragmented memory, to be sure, random titbits and a wide range of sensation with little to no context or use. But it had served its purpose, she had to admit with some reluctance, it had given her an answer, even if she could find no use for it now.

Well, if she could place such a block, then it stood to reason that she could also remove it.

She recalled the feeling of something being severed inside her, the one she had felt these few days before, and imagined it happening in reverse.

The herald of her success was a sudden difficulty to breathe, and Widowmaker hissed in near-physical pain as that tight knot in her chest seemed to expand a little, wiggle and stretch its edges out.

Then she repeated the question, in the relative privacy of her mind.

Not immediately, perhaps, but soon enough, the ceiling drifted out of focus in her eyes as it was overlaid by another volley—an accent rough to her ears, beautifully contrasting against a soft-spoken manner and warm voice; a ring of laughter, often slightly embarrassed, often accompanied by a hint of a blush or a nervous fidget; a mechanical and stumbling step until the morning’s first cup of coffee; dark circles near-permanent under blue eyes; hair a bit brittle and so frequently tangled, the way it yielded to a brush in her hands and the way it smelled when her face was buried in it; a head tucked under her chin and an arm snugged about her shoulders and a wordless murmur of contentment that had never failed to make her lips pull into a smile, back then—and even despite how overwhelming that kaleidoscope was, how palpable and visceral those sensations were, she could not, again, find any emotion tied to the memories in herself.

The only thing she felt was that infernal knot looped and corded around her heart, tightening like a scorching hot fist with every flash of a life she no longer had any claim to, making it difficult to keep her breathing steady—and even in that, she felt disconnected from the memories, as if the events they presented had happened to someone else.

 _You held her dear,_ Widowmaker thought calmly at that tightness deep inside. _So dear that part of it remained even through everything else being beaten out of us._

There was no response. Therefore, nothing to suggest that statement had been untrue. So Widowmaker took it as a confirmation. She had a sense that wasn’t everything there was to it, too, but it was the lion’s share of the matter, so it would do for now.

_The anger, now, and the hate—why are those here?_

She didn’t know what she had expected, really, but she knew she hadn’t expected that ire, that loathing, that appetite for Mercy’s suffering and failure, to flare like a propane flame and deafen her for a moment like a shriek of the damned.

Widowmaker swallowed, her fingernails scraping against the table’s surface as her hands tightened, and she stood like a breakwater against the tide from inside her until it crashed over her and divided on impact, divided into waves smaller, less overwhelming, easier to withstand. _What did she do to warrant all this?_

There was nothing, but not the same nothing as moments before. This was not a silence of the lack of anything disproving the statement—this was a silence of no answer available, because the right question had not been asked yet.

Widowmaker drew a long breath, held it. _What didn’t she do?_

This time, what she received in response was not an easy to disregard pressure in her chest. This time, the response slammed into her like a ton of bricks, leaving her frozen and bowing her head, and although it consisted of a flurry of loosely connected memories and sensations again, this time it was her own memories, oh yes, very much so, the respirator hard and alien over her face and stretching it claws down her throat, the fluid around her thick and cloying and burning cold like liquid nitrogen, the chill eating through her body until she had stopped noticing it against the newfound cold of her own skin, the endless, endless, endless sting of syringe needles and the pressure of injections forced into her blood—

Widowmaker shuddered, and shoved that away, but without placing a block like she had before. She knew how she had been made. The general knowledge was quite enough for day-to-day existence. There was no need to compromise herself with dragging the details back to the surface, and certainly not after she had intentionally repressed the lot of them.

 _That’s mine,_ she thought at the knot in her chest. _What does Mercy have to do with it? She hadn’t even been there._

The tightness inside her reflected her last sentence back at her, until it reverberated like an echo, underlined with a small rustle of virulent fury that grew stronger with each pass.

Widowmaker considered for a moment, then patiently rephrased the question until it became: _Why do you hate her so for that absence?_

Another flash, from the part of her initial conditioning that had been so filled with pain that she remembered it only as clearly as she would a fevered dream—a flash of her spine arching as far back as it would go when she thrashed in her bindings, of her skin rubbed raw as those bindings chafed, and chafed, and chafed, until she bled, of her throat burning from being constantly scraped raw by her own screaming, of the only thing pronounced enough to be felt through the icy flames licking her nerves being the low, growling simmer of shame at her pride broken far enough to make her beg for respite and scream for help, scream the names of those who had called out to her the first time, those who had never come to her rescue, those who had not come for her ever again.

 _She hadn’t even been there,_ the echo of her own thoughts hissed at her.

Widowmaker closed her eyes, and breathed out. “She hadn’t cut it short,” she murmured aloud to the empty room.

Another deep breath to centre herself, and she considered the remains of that deep-rooted fondness of Mercy, a tree stout enough to hold up the world—and how diseased, how eaten through by abandonment and betrayal it had been.

It was not the answer she had come for.

And by this point, she doubted she would get the one she had come for. Regardless—she had to try.

So Widowmaker tried to contain her impatience and thought, _Listen, do you want her dead or not?_

There was another confusing jumble of contradicting emotions from that irksome knot inside her. Of course there was. She should be damn well getting used to that by now, shouldn’t she? How foolish of her to expect that putting in some rudimentary effort would immediately result in a clear yes or no, of course it wouldn’t, not to questions thrown against some barely breathing ghost of her past.

 _What a waste of time_ , she thought, even as a tiny voice inside her whispered, _no, not a waste, a first step, don’t stop, don’t leave–_

Widowmaker pinched the corners of her eyes, then reset the screen back to the smooth black and the Talon logo, and walked out of the room.

She had come here for a specific answer. She had gotten several answers, and the only thing they gave her was more questions. But at the very least, she had done everything she could think of to solve the situation, and that earned her the right to smoke herself out in the gym until there was nothing but exhaustion on her mind again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Piotrek, nie rób z siebie idioty, piłeś, powiedz Gibraltar  
> \- ...piłem


End file.
